Jacques, 67, spoke to Futura about his long journey to lose weight. After years of failure, an unconventional method has overcome those extra pounds. Discover its history.
Jacques Degroote, a 67-year-old engineer, is one of the French people concerned about their weight. ” For a long time I had problems with being overweight, with yo-yos, with diets. I bought a whole collection of diet books that I never finished reading and that didn’t help. I was waiting to find the right solution. »
The right solution for Jacques is a weight loss technique little known to the general public: the gastric balloon. The balloon lodges in the stomach where the place it occupies induces a feeling of early satiety. The first balls were designed in the 80s but, after disappointing results and various problems, the technique fell into oblivion without disappearing.
In forty years, the devices have evolved and that of Allurion Technologies, a company founded in 2009 by two Harvard students, is the most at the forefront of this technology. It has proven its effectiveness and safety in several scientific studies conducted by Allurion. Allurion’s ball and accompanying aftercare program helped Jacques achieve his weight loss goals. ” I weighed 145 kilos when I started for 1m86, and I lost 35 kilos in two stages. About fifteen kilos fairly quickly, the next 20 kilos more slowly. He started the program in November 2019, two months before the onset of Covid-19, and his weight has been stable ever since.
Did you know ?
Inclusion criteria for the Allurion gastric balloon:
- A BMI greater than or equal to 27.
Exclusion criteria:
- Dysphagia;
- Disorders predisposing to intestinal perforation;
- Disorders predisposing to gastric perforation;
- Gastrointestinal bleeding or disorder predisposing to it.
A balloon in the stomach
« I found that having surgery was not a good solution, it represented a health hazard. Unlike the first gastric balloon models placed under endoscopy, Allurion’s does not require hospitalization or medical procedures. Just swallow it. The balloon, made up of a thin polyurethane membrane, is compacted into a capsule that the patient ingests with a glass of water under the supervision of a doctor in one of the firm’s 51 clinics. ” It’s a bit bigger than a capsule, there’s a very small thread attached because that’s where we’re going to fill the balloon. Me, after half a liter of water I had not swallowed the pill! “, he recalls.
The little thread that Jacques evokes is a catheter through which the doctor introduces sterile physiological water into the gastric balloon. Once it is full, the catheter is carefully withdrawn, then a small layer of fat seals the hole. Prominently, the balloon stays in the stomach for sixteen weeks before it empties spontaneously.
If that sounds easy as pie, Jacques recalls that the first days with the ball were rather unpleasant ” For two or three days, I felt really tired, with nausea without it being unacceptable, we are not well and we want to sleep. » The first meals are liquid (broth) before the actual nutritional management begins.
A personalized follow-up
All patients entering the Allurion program are followed by several experts, including a nutritionist, and receive information on their patients’ weight and physical activity through a connected scale, an activity tracker and a smartphone application. Adjustments are made from this data to personalize tracking. Allurion promises a loss of between 10 to 15% of the initial weight, Jacques lost 15 kg with the ball – a weight loss which continued after thanks to the rebalancing of food. ” The ball made me enter a framework from which I did not come out. »
If, for Jacques, the ball was forgotten most of the time, to the point ” that we wonder if we still have it he reminded himself of when he had to be evacuated. Most of the time, the empty balloon comes out through natural routes, but sometimes it takes another route, as was the case for Jacques. He vomited it! ” I had a nausea and it came out like this. I was at the edge of a garden and I noticed as I leaned over that the ball was resting in front of me. It’s a kind of chewing gum, it has no more consistency. »
“No regrets” for Jacques who achieved his goals
If the experiment is successful for Jacques, in rare cases, it leads to serious complications. The scientific literature reports the case of a 43-year-old woman who failed to evacuate the balloon dating from 2021. His obstructed bowel had to be freed by endoscopy. This case is presented as the first in the scientific literature by its authors. In 2018, a another 55-year-old patient had a small bowel obstruction from the gastric balloon six weeks after it was inserted. He had to undergo a colonoscopy to remove it, a procedure that left no sequelae. These examples are rare, they represent only a minority of the 100,000 balloons placed in Allurion clinics to date, but they exist all the same.
From all this experience, Jacques keeps a positive memory. Despite the 4,000 euros spent to be part of the program – 2,000 euros for the ball and 2,000 euros for the follow-up with the nutritionist and the equipment that the patient keeps – he recommends the program to his friends and family. ” No regrets. It’s been 40 years since I had the solution, and now it’s behind me. »