5 Things To Consider Before Putting Off Weight Loss Surgery
Posted by: HealthyGirl / Category: Weight Loss
For many patients gastric bypass surgery is very much a last resort and something to be put off as long a possible while they consider all of their options. Indeed, in most cases patients are helped in this by their doctor who will often insist on a program of diet and exercise before even considering referring a patient to a bariatric surgeon. But is this the right approach?
Aside from the simple fact that almost everybody agrees that exercise and diet programs do not work and are a total waste of time for the vast majority of patients, there is very good evidence to show that putting off surgery is putting patient’s lives at risk.
In a recently published study the records of more than 2,000 patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery between 1995 and 2004 in one particular medical center were examined. The team carrying out the study wished to see whether there were any factors which would have predicted the risks faced by these patients before they had surgery and they found 5 things that they believed increased a patient’s risk from surgery.
The first of the five factors was gender with women being at less risk than men. The second factor was having a body mass index of over 50. The third factor was age with people under the age of 45 being at lower risk. The fourth factor was the presence of high blood pressure (hypertension), frequently linked to cardiovascular disease. The final factor was previous evidence of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolus) or a predisposition for this condition.
The researchers went on to award a point for the existence of each factor and divided the study group into those at low, medium and high risk according to their scores. Next, they looked at the death rate for each of 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%.
Of course there is not much you can do about your gender but, as far as the other four factors are concerned, the effect as far as the risks of weight loss surgery are concerned are obvious. Ageing, continuing to gain weight and developing health problems all increase the risks for surgery. So, if you are morbidly obese, you should consider undergoing surgery early and balance the risks of waiting against the possibility of finding a better alternative.
Tags: death risk, gastric bypass, gastric bypass surgery, obesity surgery, surgical risks, weight loss surgery
