About 200,000 Americans undergo weight loss surgery every year, choosing methods like gastric bypass, banding, or surgical balloons to shrink the stomach and decrease food intake.
Now, doctors have another option for patients, when diet and exercise is not enough.
Standing 6-feet-4-inches tall, 44-year-old Wilcoxon leaves a big impression.
These days, Wilcoxon is more than 135 pounds lighter after a lifetime struggle with diet and exercise that impacted his life and his health.
"I sat in my chair for probably the last two years before I had this done," Wilcoxon said.
"When it's your husband, you don't want anything to happen to him. I'm getting emotional here. I don't want him to die," said wife Christy Wilcoxon.
"What the device is is a modified feeding tube with a larger external portion and a smaller internal portion," Kushnir said.
Thirty minutes after a meal, Eric Wilcoxon connects the tube to a water canister, and pumps out about one-third of his stomach.
"Similar to what happens with weight loss surgery, some of the food you eat doesn't go where it naturally would, which helps you lose weight because you don't absorb as many of the calories," Kushnir said.
"A lot of people do think it's gross, but I'm really not overly concerned about what other people think," Eric Wilcoxon said.
"People don't comprehend how much you have to chew in order to do this. This tube in my belly is no bigger than an ink pen sitting on your desk," Eric Wilcoxon said.
But Eric Wilcoxon credits that tube, plus a healthy diet with allowing him to do things he couldn't before, like coach his son's football team.
The FDA approved the Aspire Assist last year for obese patients. Patients must not have undergone any other surgical weight-loss procedure to be considered for aspire assist. Unlike other weight-loss procedures, the Aspire Assist device can be removed.
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Aspire for weight loss - WLS-TV
