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An Examination Of The Health Risks After Obesity Surgery
By: Donald Saunders

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As the problem of obesity continues to increase in many Western countries we are becoming more and more sensitive to the health risks associated with being very overweight and of the increased risk of death as a result of obesity. But to what extent can these risks be lessened by obesity surgery?

A study recently examined the records of a large number of people who underwent gastric bypass surgery from the start of 1995 to the end of 2004 and found that in the region of one percent of patients died within a year of their surgery and that roughly 6 percent died within 5 years. When the numbers were adjusted to account for age and sex and matched against figures for the population as a whole they were discovered to be relatively high. So exactly what does this say about the ability of obesity surgery to reduce the general risk to our health?

To answer this particular question then we need to look beyond the headline numbers and discover why these deaths happened and where the true difference lies between the population at large and gastric bypass patients.

If we examine the detailed numbers two things in particular stand out.

The first is the number of deaths resulting from heart disease which was the leading cause of death in the gastric bypass patients and is considerably above that found in the population at large.

The second is the number of deaths that resulted from suicide and from drug overdoses that, though not officially categorized as suicide, must nevertheless raise the question of whether such overdoses were really accidental. In the population at large you might expect to find some 2 deaths from suicide in a group of the same size as that used in the study and yet this study group showed a total of 30 deaths from suicide and drug overdoses.

If we look at these results and consider them alongside our general knowledge about people undergoing obesity surgery then we can possibly understand this variation to a certain degree.

Despite the fact that weight loss surgery is generally extremely successful it is often not undertaken until people are at risk from other conditions or comorbidities and, though surgery can cure several of these conditions and reduce the risk from others, a lot of people are still at some degree of risk after surgery. For instance, in a lot of cases patients continue to be troubled by such things as hypertension and diabetes mellitus and it is perhaps unsurprising that this section of the population has an increased risk of heart disease.

Further, while bariatric surgery may lead to a considerable loss in weight a lot of patients remain very much overweight for a long time after surgery and some people will stay that way for months or years to come.

Lastly, the lifestyle changes following surgery can be dramatic and a lot of people experience depression during the months following their surgery. Without doubt a lot of attention is paid to the physical affects of obesity surgery and the need for such things as a strictly controlled diet and exercise but, frequently, little more than lip service is paid to the very real psychological affects of surgery.

Only time will tell whether or not this explanation is valid but there is little doubt that improved post-operative care for gastric bypass patients could go a long way to solving this variation.

Article Source: http://www.depositarticles.com

GastricBypassFacts.info provides information on all forms of weight loss surgery from the roux-en-y gastric bypass to the mini gastric bypass

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