700,000 obese Britons need stomach stapling
Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph 12/08/07
Almost 700,000 people are so fat that they need drastic surgery to tackle their weight problems, the Government’s health watchdog has found.
Despite the scale of the obesity crisis, primary care trusts (PCTs), fearful that the £3 billion cost of the operations would cripple the NHS, are restricting surgery to the most desperate cases. Last year, fewer than 5,000 such operations were performed.
Analysis of the guidance drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) reveals that 688,000 people in England, classified as “morbidly obese”, are entitled to be fitted with gastric bands or to have stomach stapling operations to reduce the amount of food they consume.
Nice says that anyone with a body mass index (BMI) above 40 should be offered surgery if other attempts to lose weight fail after six months, and those with a BMI above 50 should go under the knife immediately. A BMI of 40 equates to a man of 5ft 9in weighing 19 stone and a woman of 5ft 4in weighing almost 17 stone.
However, obesity experts claim that PCTs are ignoring the guidelines and, because they cannot afford to pay for thousands of operations – which cost about £6,000 each – are imposing stricter restrictions of their own.
Critics said the figures were an indictment of the Government’s failure to tackle Britain’s obesity epidemic, which has seen the number of obese people soar by 40 per cent in the past decade. One Briton in four is now classed as obese.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: “This is an illustration of the Government’s failure to tackle the problem. It shouldn’t be about waiting until someone becomes a hopeless case.”
Obesity experts said that cash-strapped PCTs were desperate to avoid the costs of operating on the obese.
David Hewin, a surgeon at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, said: “The numbers involved are huge, so PCTs are coming up with much more stringent criteria and moving the goalposts. Some are only offering surgery to patients who have other medical problems, such as type two diabetes, and some only to patients with a BMI over 50.”
Janet Edmond, director of the British Obesity Surgery Patient Association, said budgetary concerns were being exacerbated by a shortage of the specialists required to perform the procedures. “At the moment this is being funded in small numbers,” she said. “I would love to see a lot more patients getting access to surgery but realistically it cannot be done overnight. The resources are just not there.”
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