Endoscopic techniques for gastric banding in bariatric surgery: computational methods for the analysis of mechanical reliability

Obesity is a current major health problem. Bariatric surgery is effective, but is associated with major complications, mostly due to surgery invasiveness and to high anesthesiology risk. For this reason, there is a need for less invasive bariatric procedures, as endoscopic ones. The aim of this thesis is to study an innovative endoscopic technique for gastric banding: endoscopically placed an endoluminal band fixed by clips to prevent the stomach to expand.