Sometimes people ask how well the Lap Band works. New results from a five-year, multi-center clinical trial are helping us answer that question. In this study, patients were followed for 5 years after Lap Band surgery, to evaluate how safe and effective the procedure was for them.

Approximately 150 adults were followed in this study. They had followup visits at  months one, two, four, six, 10, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24. Then every six months after that. In deciding what would be considered “effective,” researchers set a bench mark of whether at least 40% of the participants could lose at least 30% of their excess weight. This would be substantially more weight than the average person loses with diet and exercise alone.

The results indicate that Lap-Band is indeed an effective weight loss procedure. The researchers found the data far-exceeeded their minimum standard, and 76% of the patients ultimately lost more than 30% of their excess weight. The average 62% of their excess weight was lost over the course of the study.  This matches with previously released data which showed 65% excess weight loss after one year and 70% at two years. Improvements in health were also seen, with included 85% of the patients seeing improvement in diabetes, 64% in dyslipidemia, and 60% in hypertension.