What are the risks of gastric bypass?

About 1-2%: Laparoscopic gastric bypass is relatively safe. National statistics say about 1-2% of patients will have complications ranging from minor wound infection to staple line bleeding to an anastomotic leak. Talk to your bariatric surgeon to and ask about his personal complication rate. Especially the number of major complications like bleeds and leaks.

Several: Any operation has risks: dying bleeding infection failure and for gastric procedures leaking anastomoses abscess excessive weight loss aggressive eating and failure.

Complications: The worst complication is a leak which occurs 3% of the time nationwide (but about .5% of the time if you go a very experienced surgeon). Bleeding, infection, bowel obstruction, anesthesia complications are others, and these typically occur at 1% or less of the time. It is a safe operation, but go to someone that has done thousands of them. For example, my group has done over 5000.