Gastric Bypass Surgery

5 Things You Ought To Think About Before Putting Off Weight Loss Surgery

For many patients obesity surgery is very much a last resort and something to be put off as long a possible while they consider all of their other options. Indeed, in the majority of cases patients are assisted in this by their doctor who will insist on a program of exercise and diet before referring a patient to a bariatric surgeon. But is this the correct approach?

Apart from the fact that just about everyone agrees that diet and exercise programs do not work and are a complete waste of time for the vast majority of people, there is very good evidence to show that putting off surgery is actually putting patient’s lives at risk.

In a recent study the medical records of over 2,000 people who had obesity surgery between 1995 and 2004 in one particular medical center were studies. The researchers wanted to see whether there were any factors which would have predicted the risks faced by this group of patients before they had surgery and they identified 5 things which they felt increased a patient’s risk of surgery.

The first of the five factors was gender with women being at lower risk than men. The second was a BMI (body mass index) of more than 50. The third was age with patients over 45 being at higher risk. The fourth factor was the presence of high blood pressure (hypertension), often related to cardiovascular disease. The last factor was previous evidence of pulmonary embolus (a blood clot in the lungs) or a propensity for this condition.

The team then awarded one point for the presence of each factor and split the overall study group into those at low, medium and high risk depending on their scores. The then looked at the death rates for these three groups and discovered that the death reate in the low risk group was 0.31%, in the medium risk group it was 1.9% and in the high risk group it was 7.56%.

Now there is nothing you can do about your gender but, as far as the other factors are concerned, the effect as far as the complications of weight loss surgery are concerned are clear. Getting older, continuing to put on weight and developing health problems will all raise the risks posed by surgery. Thus, if you are suffering from morbid obesity, you ought to consider having surgery early and balance the risks of waiting against the possibility of finding a better alternative.

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