"Surgery For Obesity"


Surgery for Obesity Improves the Quality of Live - NY, 1999 (Reuters Health)
Surgery designed to treat obesity not only facilitates weight loss but also fosters overall well being, say US researchers. "Surgical treatment of clinically severe obesity has a profoundly positive impact on patients' perceptions of their health status, "according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Prior to undergoing surgery that limits the amount of food they can eat, extremely overweight people score themselves lower than the average person on virtually every measure of their health status. According to Dr. Patricia Choban and her team at the Bariatric Treatment Centers of Ohio in Columbus, Ohio, such patients score well below average in physical activities, social functioning, general mental health, vitality, and overall health perception. By the time their weights plateaued, some 18 months after surgery, the patients had stabilized their weights at an average of 95 pounds lighter than before surgery, losing more than 60% of their excess weight, according to the report.

With the weight loss came improvements in every measure of well being tested. In fact, the report indicates, physical activity, general mental health, and overall health perception rose to levels equivalent to national norms, while vitality and social functioning scores actually exceeded those posted by "normal" individuals. the magnitude of improvement in these measures was something of a surprise to the researchers, given that the patients remained 40% overweight at their plateaus.

"Most of these patients already had good coping mechanisms," Choban said in an interview with Reuters Health. "Simply removing some of the burden seems to be enough to make a big change in their daily lives." "For many of them," Choban added, "the success of losing some of their weight proves to they're not bad people who can never change. And that makes a big difference in their self-images." "Gastric bypass surgery is really the gold standard of treatment for patients who are severely obese," she concluded. "The patients lose weight, their health improves, and they feel better about themselves."
Source: Journal of the American College of Surgeons
1999; 188:491-497.

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