We are no longer accepting cases regarding these products. Due to a terrible Supreme Court ruling, consumers injured by this product are no longer permitted to sue the manufacturers of this device. We wish we could help, but the Supreme Court has taken the rights of citizens away to protect the profits of medical device manufacturers. For more information, please read the following New York Times article entitled “Medical Device Ruling Redraws Lines on Lawsuits.“
In 2012, a scientific study published in the medical journal Surgical Endoscopy by H. Spivak et al. titled “Long-term outcomes of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding and laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in the United States.” evaluated the long term safety of gastric banding and laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, two surgical procedures used for obesity reduction.
Laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) involves the implantation of a plastic band around the stomach, limiting the size of the stomach. With a smaller stomach, patients become full more readily and tend to eat less. Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (LRYGB) is explained by WebMD as follows: “Gastric bypass surgery makes the stomach smaller and causes food to bypass part of the small intestine. [One] will feel full more quickly than when [one’s] stomach was its original size. This reduces the amount of food [one] can eat at one time. Bypassing part of the intestine reduces how much food and nutrients are absorbed. This leads to weight loss.”
The Spivak (2012) study compared 148 gastric banding patients (implanted November 2000 – March 2002) with 175 LRYGB patients who had undergone that procedure between June 2000 and March 2005. In all, 127 gastric banding patients and 105 LRYGB patients were available for follow-up.
“At 7 years, the excess weight loss (EWL) was 58.6% for LRYGB and 46.3% for LAGB with band in place”, but researchers found that by that time, “19 LAGB patients (15%) had had their bands removed, bringing the failure rate for LAGB (including patients with less than 25% EWL) to 48.3% versus 10.7% for LRYGB”.
That is, after 7 years’ use, gastric banding was found to fail about 5 times more frequently than gastric bypass.
“By 10 years, 29 (22.8%) of the bands had been removed, bringing the total LAGB failure rate to 51.1%.”
Researchers also found that “In 10 years, 67 LAGB (52.8%) and 43 LRYGB (41%) adverse events had occurred.”
Due to these findings, the team concluded that “The main issue with LAGB was its 50% failure rate in the long term, as defined by poor weight loss and percentage of band removal.”
With such staggering failure rates, a number of Allergan LAP-BAND lawsuits have been filed — the Allergan LAP-BAND is a gastric banding system associated with a high rate of complications and failure.
Our Allergan LAP-BAND Lawsuit Information page is a great place to start if you have any questions about the Allergan LAP-BAND.