Though it is not unheard of for the risks of this surgery to be downplayed, the vas majority of negative out comes (death being the most extreme of these) are due to the patient not changing his or her lifestyle and relying on the band like it was magic. Nothing has been put forward to suggest it is otherwise in either of these cases.

what happened to losing weight the right way? these people clearly were not beyond the point of exercise. 25 and 27 years old. how lazy are they? go to the gym and eat healthy. they chose to have this surgery. they shouldve researched the risks as this was not a required surgery. it is completely their fault. whats next, my boob job killed me?

As a taxpayer, I'd like to preemptively sue fat people for costing me a lot in Medicare payments once they become old enough to qualify.

If the hospital oversold the procedure then they're stupid, but it doesn't change the fact that 25 and 27 year olds should be eating salad and exercising to lose the morbid obesity.

Is everything always someone else's fault besides that of the person involved?

So does that mean I can sue you now for your obvious lack of intelligence and how much that is going to cost us when you do something else stupid: like open your mouth about something you obviously don’t care to even find out about before commenting on, and the medical bills that will ensue when someone has enough of your comments and puts your head through a brick wall and you are even more cranially challenged?

So does that mean I can sue you now for your obvious lack of intelligence and how much that is going to cost us when you (or someone like you) do something else stupid: like open your mouth about something you obviously don’t care to even find out about before commenting on, and the medical bills that will ensue when someone has enough of your comments and puts your head through a brick wall and you are even more cranially challenged?

I would like to add that insurance companies should be forced to give rebates to people who regularly exercise and eat well. Not sure how you could prove it, but it would be nice.

Instead, we have state governors who want to tax gym memberships... serious lack of forward thinking.

not everyone who is obese is a candidate for surgical weight loss. often if you are fat enough to justify the procedure, you will have had one or more "co-morbidities" that have been uncontrolled by medication that have resulted in additional damages. for example, diabetes and high blood pressure. the added stress of surgery and resulting starvation can be too much for already damaged organs to handle. this coupled with the relative ease of laproscopic lap-band surgery which is often performed as an outpatient procedure, and the increased income needs of many hospitals (due to the recession) may be resulting in increased unnecessary deaths.

I wonder if many of these deaths would not have occurred had the patients undergone the more drastic, but traditional, bariatric surgery, stomach stapling, and intestinal bypass which would have involved additional oversight before and after the surgery.

Allegedly, some people who aren't quite heavy enough to qualify for weight-loss surgery will gorge themselves for a period of time, so that they'll gain enough weight to qualify.

"I heard your dad went to a restaurant and ate all the food in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant."

and many hospitals will accept borderline patients because they are desperate for the additional income in the current crappy economy and shadow of the new health insurance laws.

most public hospitals are on the edge of chapter 11, and the lap-band outpatient procedure is a considered low risk, high income, cash cow.

What's really disturbing is that one woman had her procedure done at NYU's Langone Medical Center which is a highly accredited teaching hospital and one of the best in the US. It seems doubtful NYU Medical is teetering on the brink of Chapter 11 and so desperate for patients that it would take unnecessary shortcuts. Although neither woman was "so morbidly obese" (whatever that means), it still sounds like both were regarded as low risk for the procedure.

Like many, I thought the lap band procedure was virtually risk free compared to bariatric surgery. I wonder how "informed" these patients were before the surgery. But perhaps in their quest for a slimmer figure, they really didn't care.

A friend of mine in LA died earlier this year after the same surgery, and we were all shocked. This isn't quite a panacea.