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An investigation of life after weight loss surgery |
| Donald Saunders |
With obesity continuing to rise in many Western countries people are becoming increasingly sensitive to the health risks from being substantially overweight and of the increased risk of death resulting from obesity. But to what extent can these risks be lessened by undergoing weight loss surgery?
A study recently examined the histories of a substantial number of individuals who underwent weight loss surgery in the 10 years from 1995 to 2004 and discovered that approximately one percent of patients died within twelve months of their surgery and just over 6 percent died inside 5 years. When the numbers were adjusted for sex and age and matched against statistics for the population as a whole they were found to be reasonably high. So what exactly does this say about the ability of weight loss surgery to lessen the general risk to our health?
To find the answer this particular question we must look behind the headline figures and find out just why these deaths happened and where the real difference lies between the general population and gastric bypass patients.
When we examine the breakdown of the figures two particular things stand out.
The first is the figure for people who died from heart disease which is the major cause of death in the gastric bypass patients and is well above that seen in the general population.
The second is the figure for deaths resulting from suicide and from drug overdoses which, though not officially categorized as suicide, must nonetheless raise the question of whether or not these overdoses were truly accidents. In the population as a whole you may expect to find approximately 2 suicides in a group of the same size as that used in the study and yet the study group showed 16 suicides and 14 deaths from drug overdoses.
When we examine these results and set them alongside our general knowledge of individuals having weight loss surgery then we might possibly explain this variation at least in part.
In spite of the fact that bariatric surgery is usually very successful it is often not undertaken until individuals are at risk from other conditions and, while surgery will cure a number of these problems and lessen the risks from others, many individuals are still at some degree of risk even following surgery. For example, in many cases people continue to be troubled by such things as diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure and it is therefore not surprising that this section of the population has an increased risk of heart disease.
In addition, while weight loss surgery can lead to a significant loss in weight many people are still very much overweight for a considerable time following surgery and some people will remain so for years to come.
Finally, the changes in lifestyle which follow surgery can be dramatic and many individuals find that depression sets in the weeks following their operation. Indeed much attention is given to the physical affects of gastric bypass surgery and the need for such things as a strict diet and exercise but, frequently, very little attention is paid to the very real psychological affects of surgery.
Only time will reveal whether this explanation stands up but there is little doubt that improvements to follow-up care for weight loss patients could go a long way to finding a solution for this anomaly.
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| About the Author |
GastricBypassFacts.info provides information on all forms of weight loss surgery from the http://gastricbypassfacts.info/articles/classical-gastric-bypass-surgery-the-roux-en-y.html">roux-en-y gastric bypass to the http://gastricbypassfacts.info/articles/mini-gastric-bypass-the-ideal-weight-loss-solution.html">mini gastric bypass
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