The world's heaviest man who weighs almost 1000 pounds gets gastric bypass surgery

The world's heaviest man who weighs almost 1000 pounds transported from his bed by SEVEN people using a specially designed stretcher for a gastric bypass and a 'second chance at a normal body'

Moreno has been bed ridden since 2002

The world's heaviest man - who weighs in at a staggering 960 lbs - is going for fat reduction surgery tomorrow. 

A team of seven staff had to help hoist Andres Moreno out of bed and onto a special reinforced stretcher to transport him from his home in Obregon City to a Guadalajara hospital for the gastric bypass on Wednesday.

The 37-year-old had become bed bound over recent years due to his weight and also suffers from a variety of serious illnesses

Medics will remove the majority of Moreno's stomach, around 70 per cent, and re-route a lengthy portion of his small intestine at the Mexico Gastric Bypass unit in the Arboledas Hospital. 

The procedure is used in morbidly obese patients to reduce meal quantities and the absorption of calories from food in a bid to make them lose weight.

But the surgery poses a real risk to Moreno's life as doctors have rarely carried out such an operation, which must be done under anesthetic, on someone of his size.

Surgeon Jose Castañeda admitted his weight even posed a difficulty to equipment such as the operating table which had never carried so much before.

But, just a few hours before he was due to go under the knife, Moreno was optimistic about his chances and was hopeful for a 'second chance' at a normal life.

Moreno's friend holds up a pair of his huge trousers. Picture Credit: Daily Mail

I start a journey that must carry me to a new phase of life, a new chapter and I hope to a new book altogether, different and far from the prison that my own body has become,' Fox News Latino reported.

Moreno said he had always been on the large side.

He was born weighing a hefty 13 lbs and by the age of ten was already tipping the scales at 264.5 lbs. A healthy ten-year-old typically weighs anywhere between 57-100 lbs.

Moreno added that he now just wanted to overcome the surgery to 'be someone with a normal body.'

The Director of Mexico Gastric Bypass board, Judith Tavares, added: 'Andres is like a vase that has suffered several blows and we do not know at what point it can shatter.'

Moreno is the second Mexican to claim the title of fattest man after the Guinness World Record awarded Manuel Uribe with the title of heaviest man alive in 2006.

At his biggest, Uribe, from Monterrey, weighed a shocking 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms) and had been bed ridden since 2002.

But after a television appeal for help, he began receiving medical assistance and slowly started to lose weight.

By the following year, he had lost almost 400 lbs to slim down to 840 lbs.

Sadly, despite his incredible weight loss, he was still morbidly obese and was never able to stand up on his own again.

That didn't stop him marrying Claudia Solis in 2008 - one of the few occasions he left his home during the past decade.

He passed away last year aged only 48.

He proceeded to put weight back on; in December 2009 he weighed 416 kg (917 lb; 65.51 stone) and in March 2012 444.6 kg (980 lb; 70 stone).

Mexico has one of the world's fattest populations, with 70 per cent of people overweight and a third of them are obese, causing a range of serious health problems.

The country also suffers one of the worst rates of diabetes which kills more than 80,000 Mexicans every year. 

Daily Mail