Safety and effectiveness of bariatric surgery: Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is superior to gastric banding in the management of morbidly obese patients

In summary, there is rapidly mounting and convincing evidence that laparoscopic gastric banding is suboptimal in the management of morbid obesity. Although short-term complications are low and hospital length of stay is short, the long-term problems including band removals are high and failure to lose weight after laparoscopic gastric banding is prevalent.