By Linda Thrasybule Ten years after gastric-bypass weight-loss surgery, patients in a recent study had managed to keep off much of the weight they’d lost. Mehaffey, from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, told Reuters Health by phone, “It’s not just that people are losing a lot of weight, but they’re also much healthier.” In gastric bypass operations, surgeons remove part of the stomach and reroute the intestines to help patients with extreme obesity lose weight. The American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery estimates that in 2014, 193,000 people in the U.S. underwent weight loss operations, known collectively as bariatric surgery.