Doctors operating on a Texas girl suffering from rare medically-induced obesity had to alter their plans in the middle of the surgery on Friday due to complications, NBC News reported. Alexis Shapiro, 12, of Cibolo, Texas, had a liver that was far larger and fattier than doctors expected, officials at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center said in live Tweets of the operation. Instead of performing a planned gastric bypass operation and a procedure to snip the vagus nerve, which controls appetite, the team performed a sleeve gastrectomy. That irreversible procedure gets rid of about 25 percent of the stomach, forming a sleeve-like structure that limits the amount of food a person can eat. Shapiro underwent successful surgery to remove a benign brain tumor two years ago, but it left her with hypothalamic obesity. She gained massive amounts of weight and suffered from an insatiable appetite.
