Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Quebbemann.
Hi Brian, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I knew that I wanted to be a surgeon since I was nine years old. My father was a medical school professor and, after hearing about the amazing new surgeries being performed, I announced to my parents that I was going to be a surgeon. After high school, I enrolled in undergraduate studies in engineering and biology and then completed medical school, all at the University of Minnesota. I then completed Surgery Residency training at the University of Chicago. In the early 1990s laparoscopic, or minimally invasive surgery was just being developed and I was lucky to train under several true pioneers in the field, allowing me to develop expertise in the field long before it became a standard surgical technique.
After surgery residency, I moved to California and joined the staff at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, CA. I entered practice as one of the few surgeons in Southern California were formally trained in minimally invasive surgery. Many of the physicians in Orange County believed that most surgery should not be done laparoscopically and I ran into a lot of resistance in developing minimally invasive surgery in Orange County. Despite the resistance, I prevailed and Hoag Hospital eventually purchased the necessary equipment for me to perform multiple cutting edge laparoscopic procedures including the first laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair, splenectomy, nissen fundoplication, colectomy for a colon tumor, appendectomy, ventral hernia repair, gastric bypass, Lap-Band and vertical sleeve gastrectomy procedures in Orange County.
As a result of my training, I had been educated in weight loss or bariatric surgery and began to develop a comprehensive bariatric program, including medical doctors, psychologists, dietitians and exercise trainers in Newport Beach. I called my bariatric surgery program “The N.E.W. Program” for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness. Over the course of three years The N.E.W. Program grew to one of the busiest and most respected bariatric programs in America.
I was keenly interested in the science of bariatric surgery and wanted to be active in results from bariatric surgery and this involved me in numerous clinical research projects and clinical trials. My clinical research allowed me to publish the first article in the world on bariatric surgery for people over 65 years of age and present the first clinical study on performing sleeve gastrectomy as an outpatient procedure. Outpatient bariatric surgery was considered radical at the time, but our patient results were excellent and outpatient sleeve gastrectomy is now the industry standard.
The N.E.W. Program rapidly became a completely laparoscopic bariatric surgery program and, according to Ethicon Endosurgery, we were one of less than 20 completely laparoscopic weight loss programs in North America in 2001. As a result, I was invited to participate in the FDA trial for the Lap-Band System and became a became the spokesperson for the Lap-Band manufacturer, Inamed, in the United States. Other invitations to be involved with the development of new weight loss technology included an invitation to consult on the development of the Reshape Gastric Balloon and an invitation to perform the world’s first Sleeve Gastrectomy using the Spider Single Incision System.
Throughout my career, I have continued to develop bariatric surgery programs for hospitals and establish them as centers of excellence. Most recently, I developed a comprehensive bariatric surgery program at Southern California Hospital in Culver City, Los Angeles, and succeeded in making that program one of the only hospital programs in California to be double-accredited as a Center of Excellence by the Surgical Review Corporation and the American College of Surgeons.
My current interest is in development of new surgical procedures for weight loss. I recently developed the S.L.I.M.M.S. Procedure for treating obesity and metabolic syndrome and it has been approved for clinical trial in 2021. This procedure combines the Gastric Bypass and Gastric Sleeve into one procedure in hopes of improving resolution of metabolic diseases associated with excess weight.
For me, surgery has always been used as a way to help patients achieve better health and fitness on their own. I firmly believe, and all scientific studies have shown, that weight loss surgery has mediocre results without the patient understanding clearly what they need to do to make the surgery successful. Diet and exercise advice has so far failed to curb the increase in obesity in our society and even surgery begins to fail long-term unless people are able to modify their habits to make their surgical success last. Understanding this, I have always been appalled at how many bariatric surgeons focus only on completing more procedures and pay little attention to the long-term results of their patients.
In response to the lack of focus on how patients can change their habits to achieve permanent success, I developed my DietaryRebuild™ program to enable people to easily create new dietary habits that will lead to permanent success after weight loss. In 2019 and 2020, I published my first two books on weight loss using the DietaryRebuild™ program titled “Permanent Surgical Weight Loss” and “DietaryRebuild™.”
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have been a lot of obstructions and struggles along the way.
In 2001, I was married and my wife was expecting our first child in September. Two weeks prior to her due date the World Trade Center attack of 9/11 occurred. I was a Major in the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps at the time and I knew that I was going to be called on to serve as a surgeon in the Army. I had just succeeded in starting a new bariatric program at a local hospital, had rented a new clinic and had a pregnant wife with a baby due in two weeks. My focus immediately changed to providing a stable practice with me being absent so that my new family would be safe.
My beautiful little girl, Brianna, was born on September 26th, 2001 and despite some minor issues was a very healthy and beautiful baby. However, at the age of only three months she suddenly developed a severe seizure disorder called Infantile Spasms. This rare seizure disorder is often fatal and within days of her first seizure she was having hundreds of seizures every day. Brianna’s mother and I were both physicians but the seizures were incredibly severe and we had to have Brianna immediately admitted to UCLA where she was started on high-dose seizure medications that only partially controlled her seizures. The seizures were often so bad that she would stop breathing and her mother, Tracy, and I would give Brianna huge doses of sedatives to stop the seizures only to then have to keep her breathing and then resuscitate her once the seizures had stopped. Family members from out of state visited to help us take care of Brianna but within a few days of arriving they were exhausted and would leave. The battle to cure Brianna’s seizure disease has since then resulted in over 100 hospital admissions and visits to Emergency Rooms in Southern California over the years. During one particularly difficult year she was admitted to emergency rooms or hospitals 41 times. We took her to world-renowned specialists around the country including UCLA, Sacramento, Scripps, Cleveland Clinic, Yale, Detroit Children’s Hospital and other centers in the hopes of obtaining a cure but none of these centers could provide a solution. In fact, at one time we were scheduled for a consultation with Dr. Ben Carson at John’s Hopkins Hospital where he would remove the half of Brianna’s brain where the seizures came from, but that was canceled when the testing was unable to identify any anatomic abnormality.
The battle to save and stabilize Brianna, and provide her with a good life, became my number one focus. Ever since the onset of her seizures, my work in bariatric surgery and weight loss has repeatedly needed to be set aside in order to focus on getting Brianna over her most recent hurdle. She has been diagnosed with a rare disease called Idiopathic Lenox Gastaut Syndrome which has no known cause and for which there is no cure.
During all this, I developed and grew a large and busy weight-loss surgical practice and experienced the usual problems with dishonest employees, unethical physicians, and the usual business hurdles every entrepreneur faces. The fact that my chosen specialty of bariatrics was, by itself, a poorly understood field and not well accepted at first by the medical community made the entire process difficult from the start, but all these obstacles were understood when I launched into this career and were expected. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was Brianna’s devastating disease and, although it has been by far the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced, in helping her through all of her medical challenges, I’ve developed insight into life that I would not have developed had it not been for her. I always say that her best day is far worse than my worst day and yet she smiles every chance she gets and is a completely innocent human being. So it seems that I’ve gained more by helping her live a better life than I’ve lost in terms of being left to focus mainly on living my own.
Aside from these hurdles and challenges, I have maintained my professional focus on weight loss and safer and more effective surgery to cure obesity and metabolic disease. I am hoping that my new procedure, the S.L.I.M.M.S. Procedure (Surgically Limit Intake and Manage Metabolic Syndrome) results in a safe and more effective procedure for those patients interested in using surgery to succeed. I also plan to promote my DietaryRebuild™ program as the only program specifically designed to help people transition from effective weight loss to permanent weight control.
I am sure that there will be more hurdles that come up over time. I believe that if I’m able to battle through the challenges as they come, I’ll always come out the other end with more wisdom, more insight and more strength than I had going in, And the end result will be that I’m simply able to do everything I’m trying to do better than I could before.
We’ve been impressed with The N.E.W. Program, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The DietaryRebuild™ Program is completely unique. Weight loss programs all tell people what to eat and give them rules that are hard to stick with. When the person trying to control their weight finds that the rules are too hard to stick with forever, they are blamed and told that they just don’t have enough willpower.
All of these programs, whether they are a surgical weight loss program or not, promote these rigid rules that “guarantee success” but that nobody can follow. And, most patients are led to believe they can just get surgery and magically they’ll become thin and fit for the rest of their lives. The reality is that surgery simply helps people make successful dietary changes but it doesn’t work without these changes being permanent. This is true for all successful weight loss, whether done using surgery or not. My DietaryRebuild™ program is uniquely designed to make permanent dietary change easy and straight forward resulting in permanent success.
What is truly unique about the DietaryRebuild™ program is that it helps people find their own unique eating pattern that works for them. By taking people through a process where they define healthy eating patterns for themselves and rapidly develop healthy, personalized habits that will stick with them over time, the DietaryRebuild™ program can be used with any weight loss method and with any set of dietary preferences, and still result in permanent success.
Another unique aspect of my clinic is that we focus on our client’s metabolism. All weight loss programs tell people that the problem is their weight, that if they only lose the weight, everything will get better. This isn’t true. Science has shown that the problem is metabolic, that excess weight and obesity is simply another complication of a screwed up metabolism, just like high cholesterol and diabetes. So the focus at The N.E.W. Program is on metabolism and this helps my patients understand better what needs to be done to succeed, both in terms of weight loss and in terms of improving weight-related medical problems. By not pretending that the only goal is to lose weight and that everything in life will magically get better once their excess weight is gone, my clinic is not just another short-term weight loss program in a long line-up of failed diets.
Pricing:
- All clients in my clinic, whether they are surgical clients or medical weight loss clients, must be enrolled in the 1-year standard weight loss and DietaryRebuild™ program.
- The standard weight loss and DietaryRebuild™ program fee is $5300.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://www.thenewprogram.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/50122196/the-new-program/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrQuebbemann/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/drquebbemann
- Other: https://www.calsurg.com/
Image Credits:
Dr. Brian Quebbemann
