Stomach-staple surgery raises pregnancy perils

An obese woman and her eight-month-old foetus died of complications 18 months after a stomach-stapling operation – an apparent first that has prompted warnings about the risks of pregnancy soon after such surgery.

The deaths raise concerns because most of the 110,000 people who undergo gastric, or stomach, bypass surgery each year in the United States are women of child-bearing years, say doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, who tried to save the mother and baby.