Weight Loss Surgery May Add Years to Life

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————————– Weight Loss Surgery May Add Years to Life

Title

————————– Weight Loss Surgery May Add Years to
Life

Stomach-Stapling Surgery

————————– There’s no doubt that
stomach-stapling surgery leads to dramatic weight loss. But new
research shows that the procedure might also add years to life.

As the number of obese people in the U.S. has soared, so has the
popularity of the surgery. In fact, East Carolina University
researchers estimated that the number of people undergoing
weight-loss surgery increased from 40,000 in 2001 to 86,000 this
year and will reach 140,000 next year.

Past research has shown that gastric bypass improves diabetes,
high blood pressure, and other diseases related to excess fat.
But the effect on a person’s life span has been unknown, until
now

To answer that question, researchers at New Hampshire’s
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center first looked at data from
previous research that showed how much a weight an average
person loses after having the surgery. Then they looked at the
average life expectancies of people at various heights and
weights. In this way, they could estimate how much the change in
weight caused by surgery would affect patients’ life span.

The results suggest that most people eligible for the surgery
would benefit, says lead researcher G. Darby Pope, MD, surgery
resident at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. “By undergoing the surgery,
they will gain life years,” he said. Pope presented the study
this week at a meeting of the American College of Surgeons in
San Francisco.

People with a BMI, a measure of obesity that takes both height
and weight into account, over 25 are considered overweight. But
according to U.S. government guidelines, patients should have a
BMI of at least 40, or a BMI of 35 with a related serious
disease, to be eligible for gastric bypass surgery. Most such
patients are more than 100 pounds overweight.

The results varied according to the patients’ age, gender, and
body mass index (BMI). According to the researchers, a woman
with a BMI of 45 at age 40 would gain three years of life. A man
of similar age and size could expect to gain 3.9 years.

These results are better than those obtained by heart disease
surgery, Pope said. But he cautioned that no one should
interpret these findings literally. The actual effects of the
gastric bypass surgery will vary a lot from one individual to
another.

Questions about the benefits of gastric bypass surgery will be
answered with more certainty by studies now under way on large
groups of patients, Pope says.

The surgery is getting more popular not only because more people
are obese, but also because surgeons have improved their
techniques. In earlier weight-loss surgery, doctors routed the
digestive track past much of the intestines, resulting in
malnutrition.

In the kind of surgery in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock study, most of
the stomach is stapled shut so that food can only enter a small
pouch at the top. A branch of the intestines is connected to
this pouch. (The unused part of the stomach is connected to this
branch downstream in order to drain its fluids.)

Patients vomit if they overeat, but feel full with much less
food. Typically, they lose about three-quarters of their excess
weight in the first year, then gradually gain some back. After
ten years or more, most carry about half the excess weight they
had before the surgery, says Pope.

Patients must take nutritional supplements for the rest of their
lives, and there is a chance of dying from complications of the
surgery. But Pope and his colleagues took this risk of
complications into account in their study and the results
suggest that the risk of death from the procedure are much less
than the risk of death from obesity. The main problem with this
type of surgery is it is only a short-term solution. Usually
overweight people have poor eating habits and do not exercise.
Having surgery does not correct either. It is vital to have a
change of lifestyle to undergo healthy weight loss. Without the
change, the body remains in an unhealthy state.

Source: WebMD

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