Top surgeon to sue over ‘rationing’ of weight loss surgery
By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent Daily Telegraph 10/09/08
One of Britain’s top surgeons is considering taking legal action over the “rationing” of life saving obesity surgery on the NHS.Professor John Baxter said that the health service was putting patients lives at risk by not funding the surgery for many.
He accused Primary Care Trusts of limiting the number of operations they performed because of the cost, which can be up to £6,000.
He said that the operations, which include gastric band surgery, would pay for themselves within four years, because they would reduce the number of obesity-related conditions, such as diabetes.
The health service currently carries out fewer than 300 stomach shrinking operations a year.
Professor Baxter said that half of all PCTs in England were ignoring guidelines that morbidly obese patients should have the surgery, which can lead to rapid weight loss.
He told Sky News: “Yes, it is fair to say that I’m considering a legal challenge because that is true. You can’t go further than that as I have just discovered that there’s no legal compulsion to follow NICE guidelines”.
Professor Baxter, the president of the British Obesity Surgery Society, added: “The case for obesity surgery is overwhelming. It is clearly being rationed.
“I am surprised there have not been more law suits by patients around the country, trying to say ‘why are you not providing this’ and it’s just a matter of time I think.”
“You actually save money by investing in obesity surgery. Sure it costs a lot up front. But after three to four years you are saving money,” said Professor Baxter.
“You actually save lives,” he added.
Professor Baxter pointed to other patient groups which used legal action to advance their case for expensive treatments.
These include breast cancer patients who went to court in a battle over the drug Herceptin, which was eventually allowed for the early stages of the disease.
Obesity costs the NHS a estimated £1 billion a year, because of the expense of dealing with related conditions including heart disease and some even forms of cancer.
An estimated 1.2 million people in Britain are now so heavily overweight that they qualify for obesity surgery.
At the current rate at which the NHS performs the operations it would take the health service 54 years to clear the backlog.
Patients who receive the surgery can lose significant amounts of weight and increase their life expectancy, studies have shown.
Last month Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, warned that today’s obese children faced dying 11 years younger than their slim classmates.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says that patients are eligible for the surgery if they have a BMI more than 40, and previous attempts at diet or prescriptions of weight-loss drugs have failed.
Anyone with a BMI between 35 and 40 can also be eligible, if they have an obesity-related condition such as diabetes.
But some PCTs require a BMI of more than 50 before they will consider the operation.
