By the time you sit down with a bariatric surgeon, you have usually spent months reading. You know what a sleeve is. You have watched the videos. What most people have not prepared for is the consultation itself: forty minutes in which a stranger decides whether to operate on your stomach, and in which you are expected to decide whether to let them.
That appointment is not an exam you can fail. It is the one chance you get to interview the person who will be holding the stapler. A good surgeon expects to be questioned and answers without irritation. The questions below are the ones patients tell us they wish they had asked, grouped the way a consultation actually flows. Print them, or keep them on your phone and work down the list.
Why this operation, and what did you rule out?
Start here, because the answer tells you how the surgeon thinks. You want to hear which procedures were considered for you specifically and why the others were set aside. Reflux that already wakes you at night points away from a sleeve. A very high starting weight, long-standing type 2 diabetes, or a history of severe heartburn each push the recommendation in a different direction.
If the answer is simply that the clinic does mostly one operation, you have learned something important. Ask directly: what would you recommend if I were your sister? The hesitation, or the lack of it, is informative.
Ask also what happens to the part of the stomach that is removed or bypassed, and whether the operation can be undone. A sleeve gastrectomy removes most of the stomach permanently. A bypass reroutes the intestine and can, in principle, be reversed, though reversal is itself major surgery. Nobody should sign a consent form without knowing which of those two situations they are in.
How much weight will I lose, and how fast?
This is where honest surgeons and salespeople separate. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery reports that more than 95% of patients lose at least half of their excess body weight, and that gastric bypass patients lose around 70% of excess weight initially. Johns Hopkins describes most patients losing more than half their excess weight within one to two years.
Notice what those figures measure. Excess weight is the weight above a healthy range, not your total weight. A person who is 60 kg above a healthy weight and loses 70% of that excess has lost 42 kg, not 70% of their body weight. Ask your surgeon to translate the percentage into a number in kilograms for your body, and ask what the realistic figure is at six months, one year, and two years, because the curve flattens.
Ask too what their own patients achieve, not what the literature says. A program that tracks its results will answer; one that does not will change the subject.
What are my risks, specifically?
General risk statistics are reassuring and almost useless. A large series of 209,116 patients found a risk of death from surgery of 0.16%, roughly 1 in 600, which is lower than many people expect. But your number is not the average. Sleep apnoea, smoking, a BMI at the top of the range, previous abdominal surgery and poorly controlled diabetes all move it.
So ask: given my history, what are my three biggest risks, and what are you doing to reduce each one? Then ask about the specific complications the NHS lists for these operations, so that you hear them from the surgeon rather than from a forum at two in the morning: blood clots in the leg that can travel to the lungs, a leak from the staple line in the days or weeks after surgery, wound infection, a narrowing or blockage of the gut, and gallstones forming as the weight comes off quickly.
None of that is a reason to refuse surgery. Untreated severe obesity carries its own mortality, and the same ASMBS data shows surgery reducing death from any cause by around 40% and death related to diabetes by more than 90%. The point is to hear both columns of the ledger from the person operating on you.
Who anaesthetises me, and who else is in the room?
Patients ask about the surgeon and forget the anaesthetist, who is the person managing your airway and your blood pressure while the surgery happens. Ask whether you will meet them before the day, whether they have experience with patients of your weight, and whether you will be assessed for sleep apnoea first, since undiagnosed apnoea changes how anaesthesia is handled.
Ask who performs the operation if your named surgeon is unavailable, and whether any part of it is delegated to a trainee. There is nothing wrong with a teaching hospital, but you are entitled to know.
What will the scars look like, and what will the first week feel like?
Most of these operations are done through a handful of small incisions. Ask how many, where, and what the surgeon expects them to look like in a year. Ask what circumstances would mean converting to open surgery mid-operation, and how often that happens in their hands.
Then ask about the practical first week: how long in hospital, how much pain, when you can shower, when you can drive, and when you can go back to work. ASMBS puts a typical return to work at one to two weeks, with walking encouraged from the hospital onwards and low-impact exercise only for the first month.
What happens if it does not work?
This question makes clinics uncomfortable, which is exactly why it is worth asking. Some weight comes back for most people. ASMBS puts regain at around 5% of excess weight two or more years after surgery, and both Johns Hopkins and ASMBS list weight regain among the expected long-term issues rather than as a rare failure.
Ask what the plan is if you stall at six months, who you see, and whether revision surgery is offered, by whom, and at whose cost. For anyone travelling abroad for the operation, that last point is not a detail. Settle before you book who pays if something needs to be redone, and where it would be done. Our guide to choosing a hospital for bariatric surgery abroad covers the written agreement this belongs in.
What will I have to do for the rest of my life?
The operation is a few hours. The commitment is permanent, and a surgeon who glosses over it is not doing you a favour. Ask specifically about three things.
Supplements. A multivitamin is needed for life after these operations, and iron, calcium and vitamin D are often required at higher doses. Ask which exact products they recommend and whether you can get them where you live.
Blood tests. ASMBS advises checking laboratory values at least once a year, indefinitely. Ask who orders them if you were operated on in another country, and what the surgeon wants to see in the results.
Eating. Ask for the stage-by-stage plan in writing before you travel, not after. If you want to know what that looks like in practice, our guide to the gastric sleeve diet after surgery sets out the usual progression from liquids to solid food.
What about pregnancy, medication and alcohol?
These are the questions people ask last, in the doorway, when they should be asking them first.
If pregnancy is anywhere in your plans, say so at the consultation. Most groups advise waiting 12 to 18 months after surgery before conceiving, and ASMBS notes that oral contraception is less reliable in patients with obesity and that cycles can become irregular while weight is changing.
Bring a full list of your medication. Absorption changes after these operations, and doses of drugs for diabetes, blood pressure and mood may need adjusting, sometimes within days. Johns Hopkins notes that blood glucose often improves immediately, before significant weight loss, and that some patients leave hospital on lower doses or none at all.
Ask about alcohol honestly. ASMBS reports alcohol problems in roughly 7 to 10% of surgical patients, a figure that surprises people and that deserves a frank conversation rather than a leaflet.
Who do I call at three in the morning?
Get a name, a number and a language. If you are treated abroad, ask who answers in the first six weeks, in which language, and what happens when you are home and something goes wrong.
Ask the surgeon which symptoms mean go to hospital now rather than wait. The NHS lists chest pain or breathlessness with leg pain and swelling, severe abdominal pain, and vomiting blood or material that looks like coffee grounds as emergencies, alongside fever, a racing heart, persistent vomiting or difficulty swallowing as reasons to seek urgent advice the same day. Write those down.
The answers that should worry you
After three or four consultations, patterns emerge. Be cautious when the clinic quotes a price before examining you, when every patient is offered the same operation, when nobody mentions follow-up, when you are told results are guaranteed, or when you are pushed to book flights while you are still thinking. Be equally cautious of a surgeon who refuses to discuss complications, or who reacts badly to being asked how many of these operations they perform each year.
Good answers sound specific, mention trade-offs, include numbers, and leave room for you to go away and think. You are allowed to take the list home, sleep on it, and come back. If you want to understand how the operation itself is performed and what a full programme includes, start with our page on gastric sleeve surgery in Turkey.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a bariatric consultation last?
There is no fixed rule, but a first consultation that covers your history, an examination, a discussion of which procedure and why, and time for your questions rarely fits into ten minutes. If the appointment is shorter than the paperwork that follows it, ask for a second one.
Is it rude to ask a surgeon how many operations they have done?
No. It is a standard question and experienced surgeons answer it without hesitation. Ask how many of the specific operation they perform in a year, and how long they have been doing it. A reluctance to answer is itself an answer.
Should I get a second opinion?
If you are uncertain, yes. Seeing two or three surgeons costs you time rather than safety, and the comparison is often what makes the decision clear. Bring the same list of questions to each so that you are comparing like with like.
What should I bring to the consultation?
A list of your medication and doses, a summary of previous operations, any recent blood tests, your weight history including what you have already tried, and your written questions. If you are consulting remotely, send these in advance so the surgeon has read them before you speak.
Can I ask to speak to a previous patient?
You can ask, and some programmes run patient support groups that make this easy. Treat curated testimonials with more caution than an open group, and remember that one person’s experience, good or bad, is not a substitute for the clinic’s own outcome data.
Before you book
The quality of your consultation is the best early signal you will get about the quality of your care. A surgeon who answers twenty questions patiently is showing you how the follow-up will feel for the next ten years. One who is irritated by the fifth question is showing you that too.
Take the list. Ask all of it. Then, if the answers hold up, look at the practical side of where you will be treated, including the full gastric sleeve programme and what it includes before and after the operation.
Further reading from independent clinical sources: the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery FAQ, the NHS page on weight loss surgery complications, and Johns Hopkins Medicine on bariatric surgery.
This article is general information, not medical advice. It cannot take account of your own medical history, and the instructions given to you by your surgical team always take precedence over anything you read here. Discuss any decision about weight loss surgery with a qualified doctor who has examined you.