My brother-in-law was recently diagnosed with a precancerous tumor in his throat. The various doctors that he has seen, locally and at the Mayo clinic, feel that this was caused by acid reflux from a hiatal hernia. He will have surgery to remove the tumor and fix the hernia. The treatment that shocks me is that they have told him he needs gastric bypass surgery. I don't understand this at all and he hasn't had the answers to my questions. Does doing bypass eliminate the reflux issues? Is this the only procedure that will do this? He is about 80lb overweight(at least in terms of what I think is reasonable - probably more if you look at the charts with the current bias toward super skinny). In any event, if losing weight were the issue there are other, less radical methods, even surgeries, than the gastric bypass. I'm worried that the doctors are getting swept away by the trend to have weight loss surgery and are suggesting a possibly unnecessary procedure.
Does anyone have any insight or experience on this?