Wound Healing After Gastric Sleeve

Question
Hello?any experience with a non-healing wound on a patient converted from a lap band to a gastric sleeve? I had a recurrent hernia that caused complications with the lap band (initially placed in December 2008) and was converted to the sleeve in June 2011. Since the surgery, the incision where the actual band port was and where the band was removed has never healed ?it has shrunk to circumference of a pencil, but has never completely closed. Have had several debridement procedures to remove scar tissue, but with no success of complete healing. Any thoughts as to why this may be occurring? Only other complications are recurrent nausea & vomiting ?occurring 1 ?3x抯 per week.

Answer
Judith,
This sounds like a tough problem.  My first thought would be that perhaps some fragment of artificial material (suture?  fragment of port?) is left in that non-healing wound.  Sounds to me as if your surgeon has addressed that possibility with the returns to surgery for scar removal - I would have thought that the subsequent operations would have captured/removed anything fragments of material left behind.  My next suggestion would be to do a "bigger" scar cleanout  - can't say if this makes sense since I'm not familiar with your earlier operations.

On the subject of Nausea and Vomiting: that is not typical at 9-10 months after Sleeve but revision surgery (prior Band) makes everything more difficult and likely to have trouble.  Your surgeon might wish you to have an Upper GI X-ray to to have an Upper endoscopy (scope) at some point to look for a scar narrowing that might be left over from the earlier operation.

Best of luck!
Dr JP

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