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Quotes about Bariatric Surgery from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"These data make us uneasy. bariatric surgery might be medically indicated in selected patients. Yet we are troubled by a radical surgical solution to what in most cases is a behavioral problem. Better solutions to obesity are surely available. Nor is gastric bypass without risks. bariatric surgery is not a regulated or credentialed surgical subspecialty. About 8% of all procedures resulted in complications requiring further surgery. Thirty-day mortality ranges between .5% and 2%. One-year mortality among medicare beneficiaries has been reported as high as 4.6%." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"As well, vitamin D deficiency can be precipitated by gastrointestinal surgeries such as bariatric surgery (intestinal bypass) or small-bowel resection (short gut syndrome). In renal failure, several pathologies are related to vitamin D metabolism. The concentration of 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D falls in chronic renal failure because of a reduced number of junctional nephrons providing 1-hydroxylase for the endocrine pathway." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"Much more so than the human body, capitalism is marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into new business opportunities: diet pills, heart bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But though fast food may be good business for the health care industry, the cost to society—an estimated $250 billion a year in diet-related health care costs and rising rapidly—cannot be sustained indefinitely. An American born in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime; the risk is even greater for a Hispanic American or African American." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"Nor is gastric bypass without risks. bariatric surgery is not a regulated or credentialed surgical subspecialty. About 8% of all procedures resulted in complications requiring further surgery. Thirty-day mortality ranges between .5% and 2%. One-year mortality among medicare beneficiaries has been reported as high as 4.6%.24 Cigarette smoking and obesity are generally conceptualized as a personal behavioral problems. In a limited sense, this is obviously true. Changing personal behavior can and does benefit one's health. Such change should be encouraged in myriad ways." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "One thing the physician can do to combat obesity is bariatric surgery, in which a gastric bypass (about 20% of these procedures restrict the gastric opening) results in significant long-term weight loss. In 1998, surgeons performed 13,365 of these surgeries. By 2002 the number was 72,177; in 2003 it was 102,794, almost an eightfold increase in five years! About 84% of bariatric surgeries were performed on women, a disproportionate amount given that two-thirds of all morbidly obese Americans are female.22 What might we expect in the future?" - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Lifestyle, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk factors 10 years after bariatric surgery. N. Engl. J. Med. 351, 2683-2693. Tucker, O. N., Szomstein, S., and Rosenthal, R. J. (2007). Nutritional consequences of weight-loss surgery. Med. Clin. N. Am. 91, 499-514. Prevalence of overweight among children and adolescents: United States 2003-2004. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity web site. Available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/ hestats/obese03_04/overwght_child_03.htm." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.) "Unfortunately, individuals with aggressive food-seeking behavior, as frequently seen in monogenic obesities, are poor candidates for bariatric surgery. The effect of obesity gene variants on treatment (diet, drug, or surgery) outcomes is an important area for future research. References 1. Bouchard, C, Perusse, L., Rice, T., and Rao, D. C. (2004). Genetics of human obesity. In "Handbook of Obesity" (G. A. Bray and C. Bouchard, Eds.), pp. 157-200. Marcel Dekker, New York. 2. O'Rahilly, S., and Farooqi, S. (2006). Genetics of obesity. In Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 1-11. 3. Faith, M. S." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"A hospital's "refuges of profit," as departments that make money are sometimes called, can include cardiology; neurosurgery; orthopedics; high-end imaging, like CT scans and MRIs; and most recently, bariatric surgery, a technique for reducing the size of the stomach to help morbidly obese patients lose weight. Obstetrics departments, which earn razor-thin margins, can be winners in some hospitals and losers in others, depending on whether the hospital delivers enough insured babies in a year to cover such fixed costs as staffing and maintaining birthing rooms and malpractice insurance." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Preoperative assessment and perioperative care of patients undergoing bariatric surgery. Med. Clin. N. Am 91, 339-351. 120. Santry, H. P., Gillen, D. L., and Lauderdale, D. S. (2005). 135. Trends in bariatric surgical procedures. JAMA 294, 1909-1917. 121. Buchwald, H., Avidor, Y., Braunwald, E., Jensen, M. D., Pories, W., Fahrbach, K., and Schoelles, K. (2004). Bariatric 136. surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA 292, 1724-1737. Poiries, W. J., Swanson, M. S., MacDonald, K. G., Long, S. B., Morris, P. G., Brown, B. M., Barakat, H. A., de Ramon, R. A., Israel, G., Dolezal, J." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"The International bariatric surgery Registry puts the thirty-day mortality rate at a reassuring 1 in 300. The real mortality rate, however, may be far higher than that—possibly as high as 1 in 50 cases, close to the death rate from coronary surgery.19 The New England Journal oj Medicine notes: "Bariatric surgery is not cosmetic surgery. It is major gastrointestinal surgery performed in extremely large patients whose obesity puts them at risk for complications and death—both from the medical problems with obesity and from the surgery itself." - Richard A. Deyo M.D. M.P.H., Donald L. Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Get the book.)

"Maggard et al. 2005). Adult onset (type 2) diabetes. For an overview of the contemporary conundrum that is the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, I'd suggest a paper by Barr et al. (2002). Although predictable from earlier surveys, Tirosh et al. (2005) demonstrated that young men with fasting blood glucose levels in the higher range of normal are more likely to reach criteria for type 2 diabetes as they age, and this likelihood increases if they have higher BMIs or blood lipids." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"A hospital's "refuges of profit," as departments that make money are sometimes called, can include cardiology; neurosurgery; orthopedics; high-end imaging, like CT scans and MRIs; and most recently, bariatric surgery, a technique for reducing the size of the stomach to help morbidly obese patients lose weight. Obstetrics departments, which earn razor-thin margins, can be winners in some hospitals and losers in others, depending on whether the hospital delivers enough insured babies in a year to cover such fixed costs as staffing and maintaining birthing rooms and malpractice insurance." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"According to the American Society of bariatric surgery, in 2003, patients and their insurers spent more the $3.5 billion on 145,000 gastric bypass and similar operations (Freuden-heim, 2005). The Centers for Disease Control announced in 2005 that obesity is the fastest growing health threat in the United States and will soon pass smoking as the number one risk factor for disease. Further research led the CDC to lower the number of deaths attributed to obesity, but it declared that obesity was still an epidemic (Zwillich, 2005)." - Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Get the book.) "For decades bariatric surgery for obesity was not covered by insurers, but in recent years it has increasingly been covered. Interventions such as gastric bypass surgery have become a growth industry in the medical world (Salant and Santry, 2006). To my knowledge, no one has yet researched the impact of health insurance on specific medicalized categories, but it seems clear that insurance can both promote and limit medicalization. It is worth restating that one reason for medicalization in our society is related to the way in which we finance human services." - Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Get the book.)

"The most commonly performed inpatient bariatric surgery is called the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. In this procedure, the stomach is made smaller and a part of the small intestine is bypassed so that fewer calories and nutrients are absorbed, according to the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Among the risks from this procedure are infection, hernia and long-term nutritional deficiencies." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.) "Edward Livingston, chairman of gastrointestinal and endocrine surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine and chairman of the bariatric surgery work group for the Department of Veterans Affairs' national health care system. "Bariatric surgeries result in weight loss, but they can [also] result in complications and death. They can improve the complications of obesity and the quality of life, and they may increase longevity," says Livingston." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.) "Medicare benefits was 4.6%. This study also found that when the surgery was performed by a surgeon who had not done many of these procedures the death rate was 1.6 times higher than when the procedure was done by a more experienced surgeon. REACTION "I was not surprised by these findings. These studies are really a very small piece of the overall picture for bariatric surgery," says Dr." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.) "Hidden Dangers of Gastric Bypass Surgery Edward Livingston, MD, Hudson-Penn Chair in Surgery, professor and chairman of gastrointestinal and endocrine surgery, University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, Dallas, and chairman of the bariatric surgery work group, Department of Veterans Affairs' national health care system. David Zingmond, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Center for Surgical Outcomes and Quality, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles. The Journal of the American Medical Association." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"Gastric bypass surgery, also called bariatric surgery, has become the most common type of weight-loss surgery. The operation certainly works, and many patients lose about a hundred pounds. Successful surgery can improve obesity-related health complications, psychological well-being, and quality of life. Furthermore, after a year of recovery, even patient survival is improved.18 But just as with every other treatment, there are drawbacks. Unlike drugs, though, surgery can't easily be reversed at a later date." - Richard A. Deyo M.D. M.P.H., Donald L. Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Get the book.) "The New England Journal oj Medicine notes: "Bariatric surgery is not cosmetic surgery. It is major gastrointestinal surgery performed in extremely large patients whose obesity puts them at risk for complications and death—both from the medical problems with obesity and from the surgery itself."20 The high estimate of mortality comes from research by David Flum, a University of Washington surgeon who analyzed data for over three thousand patients who underwent gastric bypasses." - Richard A. Deyo M.D. M.P.H., Donald L. Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Get the book.) "The president of the American Society for bariatric surgery notes: "All of a sudden there has been this explosion of people doing the procedures, and some, quite honestly, are not doing the operation the right way or do not follow up the right way."22 Experts say that some doctors have even encouraged obese patients to gain more weight so that they would become heavy enough to qualify for the surgery.21 Even successful surgery isn't a magic bullet. Dr." - Richard A. Deyo M.D. M.P.H., Donald L. Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Get the book.)

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