5 Things You Ought To Consider Before Delaying Weight Loss Surgery

June 7th, 2009 by admin

For many patients obesity surgery is very much a last resort and something to be put off as long a possible while they explore all of their options. In fact, in most cases patients are assisted in this by their doctor who will insist on an extended program of diet and exercise before even considering referring a patient for surgery. But is this the right approach?

Aside from the simple fact that just about everyone agrees that exercise and diet programs do not work and are a complete waste of time for the vast majority of patients, there is very good evidence to show that putting off surgery is actually putting patients at risk.

In a recent study the medical records of more than 2,000 patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery between 1995 and 2004 in one particular medical center were examined. The researchers wanted to see whether there were any factors which could have been used to predict the risks for this group of patients before they underwent surgery and the team of researchers identified 5 things which they felt increased a patient’s risk of surgery.

The first of the five factors was gender with men being at greater risk than women. The second factor was a body mass index of more than 50. The third factor was age with patients over 45 years of age being at higher risk. The fourth was the presence of high blood pressure, often related to cardiovascular disease. The final factor was previous evidence of pulmonary embolus (a blood clot in the lungs) or a proclivity for this condition.

The researchers then awarded one point for the presence of each factor and split the overall study group into those at low, medium and high risk according to their scores. The then examined the death rates for these three groups and discovered that in the low risk group the death rate 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 factors are concerned, the effect as far as the complications of gastric bypass surgery are concerned are obvious. Ageing, continuing to gain weight and developing health problems all increase the risks for surgery. Accordingly, if you are morbidly obese, you should think about early surgery and balance the risks involved in waiting against the chances of finding a better alternative.