Use of the Round Ligament as a Natural Living Gastric Band for Weight Loss Surgery: a preliminary report.

With non-operative methods of treatment being notoriously refractory and prone to failure, gastric partitioning and banding surgery has become a more acceptable method of treating morbid obesity. The present method of simple gastric banding has developed with modifications over several years, with the present fashionable procedure creating an upper gastric pouch of about 50 ml by applying a restrictive band of a suitable material just below the fundus of the stomach. This article describes the development of this band which previously used synthetic material, by using a live natural material, ligamentum fares (round ligament), and thus finding a solution to the theoretical and actual problems of infection and erosion from such synthetics.