What Is Bariatric Surgery, and How Does It Work?
Marlene Breverman stashed this in Weight loss
Stashed in: Business Facts, Awesome, Fat!, Diabetes, Weight Loss, Healthcare!
I always thought of it as a surgery of last resort but this article makes it sound like more people should consider it.
24 million Americans are eligible for bariatric surgery?!
Geez that seems like a lot.
Bariatric surgery is an option that obesity medicine specialists say is too often ignored or dismissed. Yet it is the only option that almost always works to help very heavy people lose a lot of weight and that also can mysteriously make some chronic conditions vanish. Here are some answers about bariatric surgery and what it does.
HOW MANY AMERICANS ARE ELIGIBLE FOR BARIATRIC SURGERY?
Twenty-four million, according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. The criteria are a body mass index above 40, or a B.M.I. of at least 35 along with other medical conditions like diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea or acid reflux.
HOW MANY HAVE THE SURGERY EACH YEAR?
Fewer than 200,000.
WHAT ARE THE OPERATIONS?
There are four in use today. The two most popular procedures are the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and the gastric sleeve. Both make the stomach smaller. The bypass also reroutes the small intestine. A simpler procedure, the gastric band, is less effective and has fallen out of favor. And a much more drastic operation, the biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, which bypasses a large part of the small intestine, is rarely used because it has higher mortality and complication rates.
US spends over $1.5 trillion a year on healthcare:
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2594716
Diabetes costs US healthcare $101 billion annually.
https://reddit.com/r/science/comments/5kkvip/diabetes_heart_disease_and_back_pain_dominate_us/
2:32 PM Dec 27 2016