Dr. Christopher Cummings - The Newest Addition to a General Surgery group at Saint Joseph Medical Ce

Hometown physician returns to bariatric surgery in the southland

“I love Kansas City, I am a KC boy,” says Dr. Christopher Cummings, DO, who is the newest addition to a general surgery group at Saint Joseph Medical Center.

Dr. Cummings is excited to be back in south KC, where he grew up and attended high school at Rockhurst. “I got a job working at a hospital that my mom worked at, I grew up 5 blocks away, I couldn’t have asked for a better situation.” Cummings states he remembers this hospital very well from his childhood and believes it plays such an important role in this community. “It just felt right and natural coming back to this area.” Dr. Cummings wife practices medicine at Children’s Mercy and they have one child and are expecting another.

Dr. Cummings recently returned home after completing a five-year residency of general surgery at the University of Illinoi College of Medicine in Peoria. And with him comes experience in a specialty: bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery is a sub specialty that focuses on surgical techniques for weight loss.

The infrastructure for this specialty is more complicated than one might think. “It is not just as simple as you come in, you see me and then I operate on you,” explains Cummings.

Obesity is a rapidly growing problem for America that has widespread medical, psychosocial and economic impacts, including costing the healthcare system itself billions of dollars annually.

For those patients struggling with obesity, surgical intervention has been proven to be effective for long-term weight loss.

The process can take anywhere from three to six months. Some of the criteria for weight loss surgery are: BMI (body mass index) of 40 or greater than 100 pounds over ideal body weight, BMI of 35 and one obesity-related health condition (such as diabetes or high blood pressure), patients who have failed at common conservative weight loss alternatives and finally patients must be over the age of 17.

“Coming to the realization that you can do better is a great first step and then after that, trying to make little modifications,” is one of the best ways to lose weight, according to Cummings.

He believes that people struggle with weight loss when they decide to try and cut out everything bad all at once. “It has to be a step by step process, with small modifications to habits and diet,” says Cummings.

“In a lot of people’s minds, surgeries like these are thought to be a cosmetic or an elective thing, which it isn’t,” explains Cummings. In a lot of cases, this type of surgery cannot only extend a person’s life and improve health. but it can also be a life saving procedure.

Dr. Christopher Cummings office is located at Saint Joseph Medical Center. For more information call 816-941-2222