The Hindu : Morbidly obese patients need surgery, says expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 15, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Morbidly obese patients need surgery, says expert

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 14. Those who are morbidly obese must be wary of going to slimming centres. Conventional weight loss measures like controlled diet, behaviour modification and exercise programmes will not be of much help to them. What they need is surgery for accomplishing the weight loss.

"In morbidly obese patients, surgery is the only method by which long-term weight loss can be achieved,'' said Pradeep Chowbey, Chairman of Department of Minimal Access Surgery of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, who on Sunday performed the first-ever endoscopic surgery for morbidly obese patients in North India as part of an international conference, OSSICON 2004, held over the weekend.

Obesity today is recognised as a health problem of epidemic proportions. "Obesity refers to a spectrum of problems of excess weight ranging from being mildly over-wight to the morbidly obese,'' said Dr. Chowbey, adding that "surgical procedures for morbid obesity can now be safely performed through laproscopy."

"Morbid obesity usually leads to associated diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiac problem, arthritis and sleep apnoea which can lead to early death,'' said Dr. Chowbey. "Hence, surgery for morbid obesity is not a cosmetic but a life-saving surgery.''

Concurs Sanjay Barude, Secretary of the apex society of doctors involved in doing surgery on morbidly obese patients. "Restrictive surgery is also useful for morbidly obese patients. There are three different surgical procedures available and in all of these, the size of the stomach is reduced so that the patient actually reduces his food intake.''

According to him, slimming centres cannot help such morbidly obese patients because they cannot burn the extra calories of patients who are overweight by more than 50 or 60 kilos by conventional methods. "And once these patients are off diet or exercise, they actually tend to put on more extra weight.''

On of the techniques used for curing morbidly obese patients is laparoscopic binding. "A biocompatible, silicon band is placed around the stomach just below the food pipe creating a 30 ml pouch. The patient feels full just after two bites of food thus decreasing his intake and causing the weight loss,'' said Dr. Chowbey, adding : "The technique is safe, simple and reversible.''

A patient friendly procedure, it is performed with no cuts on the abdominal wall and requiring only a short stay in the hospital. "Very little pain is caused by the surgery and the patient can resume his or her work within a few days after the surgery.'' Dr. Chowbey added.

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