In March of 2005 Deigo Maradona joined the long list of over weight celebrities who underwent a stomach bypass procedure to solve their weight problem forever. Intense media reaction followed the news of performing a laparoscopic gastric bypass operation to football legend Diego Maradona. The famous soccer superstar progressively gained weight following retirement. His obesity came at a heavy cost of causing serious heart problems and the superstar had several attacks of serious heart attacks threatening his life. Maradona was advised to have weight reducing gastric surgery as a life saving measure to rid him of his excess weight together with cure of all diseases caused by his overweight. Laparoscopic (key-hole surgery) stomach bypass was chosen for him as the most effective surgical remedy to treat obesity in the world today. The surgery reduces the stomach’s capacity for holding food and bypasses part of the small intestine, forcing the patient to eat less. Maradona lost 110 pounds of his weight and now has a TV show and a football training contract. Over the years the procedure has proven to be the most effective procedure for permanent weight reduction in cases with excessive or morbid obesity. In the year 2004 more than 140,000 such cases were performed in the US alone.

Carnie Wilson singer and daughter of the beach boys singer Brian Wilson decided to change her life forever and had laparoscopic stomach bypass in 1999. Before surgery she weighed a massive 350 pounds. Following her gastric bypass she lost 150 pound of weight and she even posed for playboy magazine following her weight loss in a strange sign of return of self esteem.

Roseanne Barr the famous actress had gastric bypass when she got to a point when obesity started to harm her health and affect her carrier. Three years after surgery she is enjoying a healthy life with carrier boom thanks to gastric bypass curing her from her life time overweight problem.

Al Roker the famous NBC weather man did not have any problems with his morbid obesity until 3 years ago it started to seriously affect his health. With heart problems serious enough to push him to have gastric bypass surgery and what a change did that affect his. The surgery turned his life upside down. He is now enjoying a healthy life at his ideal weight and after all his health problems disappeared for ever. The beauty of this surgery is that every kilogram you lose you know that you will never see it back again.

Professor Dr Khaled Gawdat who has pioneered the specialty of morbid obesity surgery in the middle east has a different approach with his patients were he has perfected performing the 4 types of obesity surgery laparoscopically. These are stomach stapling, stomach bypass, stomach banding and a BPD operation. His preferred approach is to choose the best option to every patient individually since some operations work well in some cases and have bad results with others. Dr Gawdat also commented that performing all these operations laparoscopically has boasted the practice of these procedures tremendously. This approach is very comfortable to patients and gives them a very speedy recovery with a pain free post operative course.
In our large series of cases in Egypt since 1996, thousands of cases were compared having different stomach procedures. Stomach bypass clearly stands out as a good operation with comfortable eating habits and a good weight control together with cure of all the obesity induced diseases. The operation needs vitamin supplementation to prevent anemia postoperatively. Our results confirmed the internationally published results of the superiority of this approach and concluded that the term gold standard of obesity surgery procedures is a name well deserved.