LEWISTON — The governor and first lady both had weight-loss surgery, a spokesman for the governor’s office said in his newspaper last week, and the surgery was done at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. 

Gov. Paul LePage, 68, and his wife, Ann, 58, each underwent a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy by Dr. Jamie Loggins, medical director of bariatric surgery at CMMC. The governor had his surgery in September and his wife had hers in December, according to Peter Steele, the governor’s spokesman and owner of the Twin City Times in Auburn.

Steele wrote two stories about their surgeries in his weekly paper published last Thursday.

The governor and first lady declined to comment Monday.

The governor had been quiet for months about his obvious weight loss. He made news earlier this month when he noted during his weekly interview with WLOB radio in Portland that he’d had surgery, saying, “There’s 50 less pounds of me to hate.”

Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is a minimally invasive procedure in which doctors remove a large portion of the stomach — generally 80 to 85 percent of it — leaving a sleeve- or tube-like stomach behind. The operation takes about an hour and patients typically spend a night in the hospital, Loggins said in an interview Monday.

Patients are able to resume all but strenuous activities within days.

Although gastric bypass surgery remains the better-known procedure, Loggins said, the newer sleeve procedure is gaining in popularity. According to ObesityCoverage.com, the sleeve operation in 2015 cost $16,800, on average, in the U.S. and an average of $18,624 in Maine.

The federal government began covering the procedure for Medicare patients in 2013 and private insurance companies soon followed. Insurance covered the operations for the governor and first lady.

Loggins has performed about 2,000 weight-loss surgeries at CMMC since the hospital opened its bariatric surgery center in 2006. He said good candidates typically have a body mass index, which indirectly measures the body’s fat percentage using height and weight, of 40 or more, or a BMI of 35 or more if they also have other health problems affected by their weight, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

However, BMI is just the beginning. Patients must also be evaluated by a doctor.

“(BMI) might get somebody thinking, ‘Would I be considered a candidate?'” Loggins said. “But obviously there’s a lot that goes into making sure that  somebody is going to be in a position to be safe and successful from an operation.” 

Patients who do undergo the sleeve procedure can eat normally once healed, but Loggins said many patients find their tastes and desires change. LePage has said he’s no longer interested in coffee or prepared foods.

Doctors believe the operation changes more than the physical size of the stomach; they believe it also changes the body’s metabolism. 

“Those same changes, they affect people’s appetites,” Loggins said. “They affect their tastes; their cravings kind of go away. So people are really put in a position to make good food choices because they have no drive that’s pushing them to make bad food choices.”

Although laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy may see an increase in popularity after the governor’s announcement, Loggins said no single weight-loss operation is for everyone. A number of procedures are available, as well as weight-loss help that doesn’t require surgery.

“If anything else, I hope we’re able to create some awareness about this disease of severe obesity, because I think for too long there’s just been misunderstanding about this condition,” Loggins said. “

“Obesity is a disease and it’s a disease that kills people,” he said. “Some people might say, ‘Well, with willpower you should be able to beat the disease.’ The reality is that just doesn’t work for most people.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

Not as weighty as you think 

If you’ve recently used Central Maine Medical Center’s online calculator to figure out your body mass index — a number that tells whether you’re overweight and could be a candidate for weight-loss surgery — you might not be as heavy as you think. 

The hospital discovered Monday that its online calculator was wrong, giving results that were about three points higher than it should have. Since only a handful of points separate BMI categories — underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese — a three-point difference could make someone seem overweight or obese when they’re not.

CMMC’s spokeswoman said it appeared the calculator was from the Maine Center for Disease Control and was out of date. 

The calculator has been pulled from CMMC’s site and will be replaced.