Imagine that you could eat whatever you want and still lose 20 to 50 pounds a month. Believe it or not, it's happening to people who are not on diets or an exercise routine. Instead, they are trying a different approach.
That approach was an innovative operation so effective that some experts predicted it would replace all other types of weight-loss surgery, Eckerman said.
In that November 2000 broadcast, Eckerman told viewers that physician Timothy Sifers was the only surgeon in the metro area performing the duodenal switch, a procedure touted as the most advanced of the obesity surgeries that had evolved since the crude stomach-stapling operations of the 1980s. Over the years, doctors had discovered flaws in some procedures: The Roux-en-Y technique caused patients to vomit if they ate too quickly or didn't chew thoroughly enough; adjustable gastric banding sometimes failed to result in weight loss; and biliopancreatic diversion could be accompanied by ulcers, chronic diarrhea, gas and major nutrient deficiencies. After the duodenal switch, though, patients lost at least as much weight as with the other procedures but didn't suffer as many complications.
"These people tend to be able to eat pretty much all they want to, but they still lose the weight," Sifers told Channel 9. Eckerman interviewed one of Sifers' patients, a 400-pound woman who said she'd just had the duodenal switch and was excited about her projected weight loss. Eckerman emphasized that the new type of surgery had no "annoying" side effects.
Watching in his south Kansas City home, Marion Bonura thought he had found the answer to his lifelong struggle with fat. In his early fifties, Bonura was so big that he couldn't zip his fly or trim his own toenails. His profession didn't make it any easier -- a fourth-generation restaurateur, Bonura, with his wife, ran Luigi's Restaurant on Holmes Road in south Kansas City, and they had helped their youngest son, Luigi, open the elegant new Trattoria Luigi's in a renovated design studio on the Plaza. (That restaurant closed in the spring of 2001.)
Bonura wanted to escape the constant culinary temptation. After the segment ended, he went to his computer and started researching the duodenal switch operation. A few weeks later, he called Sifers' office in Mission and set up an appointment for a consultation.
"He wanted that surgery really, really bad. It was all he could talk about after he'd seen it on TV," recalls his wife, Marian Bonura.
Marian went to her husband's consultation with him in January. They did everything together. At their restaurant six days a week, she cooked pasta while he chatted up customers and handled the business. Construction workers were building their dream house, and before it was finished they'd sneak in, put on old records and dance on the marble floors. Even their first names, Marion and Marian, were almost indistinguishable.
As they sat together in Sifers' waiting room, Marian Bonura had misgivings. She thought the operation was too risky. A nurse led the couple into a consultation room, and soon Sifers walked in. Marian remembers that he looked as if he'd just arrived from a beach vacation. His hair was bleached blond, and he wore multicolored floral surgical scrubs. Sifers pulled out a marker and some paper, Marian recalls, and drew diagrams of different types of surgical procedures.
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I TOO WAS OPERATED ON BY DR SIFFERS. I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH ANYONE ELSE THAT MIGHT BE ABLE TO SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE FINDING A DOCTOR WILLING TO SEE THEM. I'VE BEEN SEEKING CARE FOR MY POST PROBLEMS OF SURGERY FOR SOME TIME WITHOUT ANY SUCCESS. I WOULD BE GREATFUL FOR ANY INFORMATION ANYONE MAY HAVE. THANKS JANA
I TOO WAS OPERATED ON BY DR SIFFERS. I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH ANYONE ELSE THAT MIGHT BE ABLE TO SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE FINDING A DOCTOR WILLING TO SEE THEM. I'VE BEEN SEEKING CARE FOR MY POST PROBLEMS OF SURGERY FOR SOME TIME WITHOUT ANY SUCCESS. I WOULD BE GREATFUL FOR ANY INFORMATION ANYONE MAY HAVE. THANKS JANA
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