Ever heard of the “EasyBand”?

This is a TAGB - a Telemetric Adjustable Gastric Band - available in the UK under the brand name EasyBand.

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I'm certainly not advertising it of course, as I know nothing about it other than what I found out this week by Googling, but in principle it sounds like the best of all worlds. There are no fills, everything is done by remote control - I attach some blurb I found below.

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My own comment: surely it's therefore just a matter of time before they make one which we can control ourselves with our own remote? Imagine that - with a zap you loosen it a bit if you're uncomfortable or you want to enjoy eating out without restriction, then another zap and you're back on the straight and narrow.... I feel like Mr Toad in the children's book Wind in the Willows, who as Toad of Toad Hall is a rich landowner, always on the lookout for a new vehicle that's smarter and faster... (parp parp!)

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"A remotely controllable gastric banding device for placement around the stomach of a patient for the treatment of obesity. The device comprises a gastric band having an inflatable chamber for adjusting the inner circumference of the band, a pressurized reservoir with a valve for providing fluid to inflate the inflation chamber, a valve for releasing fluid from the inflatable chamber, and a controller for controlling the valves. The controller is remotely controllable from outside the patient.

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The new band - the EasyBand - is adjusted electronically. It consists of a silicone tube containing a metal loop instead of salt water. The tube also has a computer chip linked to a tiny motor (the size of a 10p piece).

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Once the band is in place, a wire attached to it is fed up through the body and into the chest. On the end of the wire is a tiny receiver, which sits just underneath the skin by the breastbone.

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To tighten EasyBand, a doctor presses a button on the handheld gadget. This sends a signal down a wire to a transmitter placed on the patient's chest.

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The signal is picked up by the receiver implanted in the body and forwarded to the microchip. The chip activates a miniature engine that tightens the band and reduces the size of the stomach.

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Information on the band's diameter is beamed back to the control unit, allowing the doctor to control any changes."
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-oOo-