TVNZ, 5th May 2010

15-year old Sherri Atkin weighted over 190 kg in August last year. In preparation for the gastric band surgery, she lost 30 kg since then.

Sherri would love to start living normal life, without being bullied, not to mention health problems such as heart palpitations and breathing difficulties.

Her life will change dramatically after the surgery. It will control her apetite. The surgeon will put on her stomach through tiny incisions. The surgery will only take about 30 minutes.

“The way I put it to my patients is I am switching off your food addiction so that you can now eat the diet your body needs for rest of your life,” says Dr Schroeder who will be operating Sherri.

mybiglife, 20th April 2010

Obesity brings health risks, and this is no different for pregnant women. Obesity during pregnancy has impact not only on the woman but also on the unborn baby. This condition may also bring chronic diseases in the future.

Some research have been carried out to see if bariatric surgery has any impact on pregnancy. The results were very interesting: weight-loss surgery can reduce the risk of hypertensive disorders during pregnancy, including gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and eclampsia.

The study was carried out by Wendy L. Bennett, assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The aim of the research was to determine if bariatric surgery could prevent the development of these diseases.

Medscape, 12th April 2010

Some research has been carried out to see if there is relation with overweight patients with psychiatric illnesses and weight-loss surgery. The study shows that those patients lose similar weight as the patients without mental issues.

Weight-loss depends on numerous factors. The surgery is only one of them. An important cofactor is the presence of a psychiatric diagnosis but the newest reserach shows that even individuals with depression, anxiety or any psychological disorder experienced similar levels of weight loss compared with those with no psychiatric diagnoses.

wkow.com, 7th April 2010

Very often patients who lost weight thanks to the weight-loss surgery are still not happy with their shape. Excess skin looks heavy and even healthy diet and exercising cannot do much about it.

The good news is a new procedure, called coset trunkplasty, that “removes a significant amount of skin from the entire abdomen, from the flanks, from the lower chest, even the upper back and the lower back”, says Dr. Moya from Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Medical Center.

UC Davis, 24th March 2010

Studies about delaying diabetes by weight-loss surgery were carried out in rats. The research was done by a veterinary endocrinologist, Peter Havel.
These findings should help in treating diabetes in human. Diabetes is a chronic disease which makes the body unable to properly metabolize sugar and fat. Diabetes cause serious health problems such as heart disease, blindness and kidney failure.

National Institutes of Health says diabetes affects about 21 million of Americans. The annual cost is more than $150 billion.

Peter Havel said weight-loss surgery is the most effective long-term treatment not only for obesity but also for diabetes.

Irish Times, 15th March 2010

David Ludwig is a director of the obesity programme at Children’s Hospital Boston. He says he was against the weight-loss surgery for the young patients. The reason for that was that he was ignoring the problem. He has, however, changed his mind.

From 1980 the number of obese children in the USA increased by three times. Obesity causes serious health problems such as sleep apnea, diabetes and heart disease.

To avoid these, Ludwig thinks regulations should let young patients undergo weight-loss procedures. These consist mainly on making a stomach smaller which limits the amount of food consumed by a patient.

Joliet Herald News, 10th March 2010

Weight-loss surgery doesn’t start with the bariatric procedure. It starts long time before that. About two weeks before the operation, the patients have to start a special diet which stimulates weight loss and shrinks the liver. The diet doesn’t contain any carbohydrates, as they make the liver larger when they are being digested.

Only two portions of food are allowed daily. It is not normal food but protein powder shakes. Patients can’t eat fruit or vegetables at this stage. To replace the hydration, they drink more water.

This helps the doctors to perform the surgery.

OnMedica, 11th February 2010

The number of weight-loss procedures performed by NHS increased more than twice between years 2006 and 2009. The NHS performed 4,220 procedures in years 2008/09 whereas 1,950 operations were carried out in years 2006/07.

The new report on obesity for England for the year 2010 shows that the number of people admitted to the hospitals because of obesity increased by 60% from 2007/08 to 2008/09. Also the number of prescribed medicines to treat obesity is 10 times higher in 2008 than it was in 1999.

In 2008 about 24% of men and 25% of women were classified as obese with BMI of 30 or more. 42% of men and 32% of women were classified as overweight in 2008 (BMI of 25-30).

Biomed Middle East, 24th February 2010

In the majority of cases patients with diabetes are obese or overweight. There are cases, though, when patients are not obese but suffer from the disease. On the other hand, there are also obese but diabetes-free patients.

This is one of the reasons why the BMI factor should be discussed as the only way to decide who is eligible for the weight-loss surgery.

Over 20 years ago BMI became a parameter of eligibility for weight-loss surgery. It makes sense to take BMI into consideration when selecting patients for the procedure aimed at weight loss but this factor becomes discriminatory when it comes to the patients with diabetes.

Yorkshire Post, 17th February 2010

It’s not easy to cure obesity, especially with children. They often eat comfort food to hide from the world, when they’ve got a problem. Then they are bullied at school, so eat even more for comfort. It’s a vicious cycle. The bigger they are, the more risky it becomes for them to have serious health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes or others.