Georgetown Bariatrics and Advanced Surgical Services

Troy Thompson talks with Dr. Eric Smith from Georgetown Bariatrics and Advanced Surgical Services about their services and about their soon to come new location!

C1 3 georgetown bariatrics and advanced surgical services.

How are you, my friend?

Dr. smith: i'm good, troy, how are you?

Troy: fantastic.

Now of course, we are trying to recover from this global pandemic, covid-19.

When you're seeing people coming into the hospital for your type of surgeries, what are some of the underlying conditions that you see?

Now of course, people have no symptoms, but have covid-19 and other people get very sick from covid-19.

What are you seeing?

Dr. smith: well, there's some obvious risk factors for people to do poorly from covid-19 or they're higher risk of even dying for covid-19.

And you hear on the news and in the literature, that age is a predisposing factor, and that's very true.

But the top two conditions outside of age, or the top two comorbidities or predictors for someone who gets covid-19 and having poor outcomes are actually morbid obesity and diabetes, which are the two most common things that we see resolved with the surgeries that we perform.

Troy: really?

What about hypertension?

Dr. smith: that's definitely a predictor as well.

Multiple medical problems cause people to be at more at risk.

People who are immune compromised.

People who've had cancer or chemotherapy.

But again, i think sometimes it gets lost in the media that age is the one thing everyone focuses on.

And if you remove age, morbid obesity and diabetes are two of the top ones that predict or a poor predictor for what the outcome may be for that patient.

Troy: of course, i want to ask you to give some advice to our viewers at home.

People who are suffering from hypertension, diabetes, morbid obesity, what are you telling them as we're going through this process now?

Dr. smith: well, it's kind of twofold, because as you mentioned, those people are fearful.

They're fearful of getting out right now and understandably so.

They see themselves as higher risk.

But what i also tell those patients is this isn't going away and we could have a whole another talk show on that, but this isn't going away.

And it is just proof that things like the flu or covid-19 or anything else, people who have more medical problems are more susceptible to having poor outcomes from these things.

And so the best thing to do is to make an impact of those poor predictors or comorbidities such as their obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, and doing everything we can to resolve or treat those.

Troy: all right.

Well, i just want to switch into more of the procedures that you perform.

What can people do to prepare to have the surgery, apart from online videos and coming in for your initial consultation, because i would only assume mentally there's a lot to get past, right?

Dr. smith: sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we provide that information to them.

When they start the process, they're going to have multiple visits with our dietician.

They're going to obviously have visits with me.

And the initial visits have very little to do about the surgery itself and a lot to do about the lifestyle changes for us to put in place.

And it's not just changing your cabinets in your kitchen and changing your eating habits and your activity level, but it's mentally changing, preparing herself for those lifestyle changes so the surgery can be effective.

And most insurances require a period of time before they can have surgery, and so we take advantage of that time to educate them and prepare them mentally and physically for surgery.

Troy: oh, i didn't realize that.

That's very interesting.

That's something that we hadn't talked about before.

If someone is feeling a little nervous, dr. eric, and let's be clear, we've touched on it a little bit earlier on in the interview with covid-19 and coming into hospitals, what is your amazing team doing to put their nerves at ease?

Dr. smith: well, i think first and foremost, we're following the state and the cdc guidelines that they recommend for all healthcare facilities.

All our staff are donning masks.

Obviously we have multiple units of hand sanitizer for patients to access, ourselves to access.

We're practicing social distancing within the waiting rooms. we're limiting the number of visitors that can come into the rooms with the patients, limiting the number of visitors or people that would be in our waiting room.

We are doing some telehealth visits too, as we've talked about before.

But we're doing everything we can to minimize that.

But i would tell people because we're so cautious, the hospital and our facility has never been safer.

Every precaution that can be taken as being taken right now.

Troy: well i think that's amazing.

You guys are always on the forefront of all of these things.

Now i do want to ask you and you know, people do ask me in the streets, after having this type of surgery, how soon does someone start seeing results?

Dr. smith: oh gosh, well patients will start losing weight in a matter of days.

Early on, i tell people don't get to fixate in the first couple of weeks.

Your fluid status changes, your numbers are changing and they're up and down, but patients will see significant results in a matter of weeks, both in the mirror and on the scale.

Troy: now, i do want to touch on one other topic a little bit, aside from this.

I do believe you're opening a new clinic, right?

Dr. smith: we are.

Yes.

Troy: where are we at with that?

Dr. smith: so we are hopefully going to open in july.

I think the next time we'll be meeting will be in our new clinic and we'll introduce some special surprises from there as well.

So we're hoping july, we'll have everything ready.

I've been over there recently.

Things are looking phenomenal.

We'll have a lot of surprises for our patients and for our new patients.

Troy: well, dr. eric, always great to see you.

We really appreciate you stopping by again.

Dr. smith: thanks for having me.

Troy: if you want to find out more information about georgetown advanced surgical services, there it all is up on the screen.

We'll