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Are You a Candidate for Weight Loss Surgery?

Criteria for qualifying for weight loss surgery typically centers around calculating how much excess weight you are carrying or your current Body Mass Index (BMI). This criteria can include the following:

  • You are more than 100 pounds over your ideal body weight
  • You have a BMI of over 40 kg/m2
  • You have a BMI of over 35 kg/m2 and are experiencing severe negative health effects, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, related to being severely overweight
  • You are unable to achieve a healthy body weight for a sustained period of time, even with medically-supervised dieting

Steps to Weight Loss Surgery

 View our Steps to Weight Loss Surgery for our program-specific protocol for appointments with our interdisciplinary team of specialists including surgical evaluation, nutritional evaluation, psychosocial evaluation, and lab work

Other Requirements

  • After surgery, patients should be able to commit to frequent clinic visits, classes/support groups and behavior change for optimal success.
  • Patients must be aware of and accept the risks associated with surgery and dramatic weight loss.
  • While you may be an ideal candidate for bariatric surgery, your decision may depend on insurance coverage. We strongly recommend contacting your insurance company to determine if you have coverage for bariatric surgery before starting the process. It can be disappointing to get started only to find out your insurance company will not cover surgery. We do have self-pay options available if that is an option for you.

Non-Surgical Programs at MUSC

MUSC Health Weight Management Center provides a number of non-surgical programs to help patients lose weight if you decide against bariatric surgery, or if you determine that you do not have insurance coverage and self-pay is not an option for you.