How obese do I have to be to get gastric bypass surgery?

How obese do I have to be to get gastric bypass surgery?

To be a candidate for gastric bypass surgery, you need to have a BMI, which is body mass index, of about forty, which equates to being about a hundred pounds overweight. You can even have a BMI of thirty-five, which equates to about a weight of seventy-five pounds, if you have comorbid conditions, again, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnoea. We have patients, obviously, who are very overweight, BMI's of fifty, sixty, seventy, even a hundred, maybe up to a weight of six hundred. The heaviest patient I've ever operated on was six hundred and seventy five pounds. But the complication rate goes up tremendously when you get over six hundred pounds, so we're very careful. We try to get those patients to lose weight, at least down to six hundred or under six hundred, before operating.