Edward Eaton Mason (October 16, 1920 – December 29, 2020) was an American surgeon, professor, and medical researcher who specialized in obesity surgery.

Classes went year-round to speed the students through undergraduate and medical school to provide the US Navy with officers during WWII.

[16] In 1949, Mason returned to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a surgical residency organized by Owen Harding Wangensteen (OHW) and stayed until 1953.

Mason started using progressive preoperative pneumoperitoneum (PPP) with his giant hernia patients or pumping air into the abdomen every few days.

[16][17][18][19] In 1954, at the suggestion of Arnold Kremen, he performed an intestinal or jejunal-ileal bypass on two patients who were gaining weight and breaking apart the hernia repair.

[1][16] In August 1965, Mason attended a meeting in Edmonton, Canada, where the world leaders presented papers on stomach physiology.

[20][4][21] At the University of Iowa, Mason met with Chikashi Ito, a Japanese surgeon arriving from Sapporo, Japan, with his family in 1965.

From their research studies, they realized that peptic ulcer disease was not helped by gastric bypass, but their obese patients lost weight.

"[1] In 1966 Mason began using the gastric bypass operation on a few patients who were extremely or morbidly obese and some of whom had giant inoperable hernias.

[8][4][21] Mason began to simplify the operation to avoid bypass of the stomach and duodenum and prevent other complications from occurring besides weight reduction.

The endeavour led to the development of Vertical Banded Gastroplasty Surgery (VBG), which he later practically performed on humans in November 1980 at UIHC.

[1][22][8][4][9][10]: 40–41 [11] The upper stomach is stapled to create a small pouch and restrict food intake, but not change the normal digestive process.

It reduced the size of the stomach and limited the number of nutrients the body absorbed by bypassing a portion of the small intestine, resulting in better long-term weight loss.

[1][13][14][26][4][10]: 47–54 [21] In 1986, Mason started the American Bariatric Surgery Registry (ABSR) to help surgeons and patients learn more about specific obesity operations and the lifelong effects of their preferred procedure.

[9] On a trip to Taiwan in 2001, Dr. Mason observed Dr. Wei-Jei Lee performing a laparoscopic VBG that was completed safely in an hour.

[29] He suggested using glucose mimetic d-tagatose in addition to weight reduction with a proper diet and increased physical activity.

[32][10]: 39 [33] Eventually, in many states, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services began to pay for bariatric surgeries to treat obesity.

Less severely obese persons with a BMI of 35-40 could be considered for surgery if they had high-risk comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes or heart disease.

He treated some of these patients with severe protein malnutrition from intestinal or jejunal-ileal bypass, with central venous feedings containing amino acids, glucose, and the required vitamins and minerals.

[36] Ed and Dordana Mason had 4 children, Dan, RoseMary, Richard, and Charles Henry, as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.