Bariatric Surgery

It hard to believe that around 4,300 people suffering from obesity received surgery for weight loss last year. Not only that but this number is just two per cent of the 20,000 clinically obese patients currently on the waiting list for stomach reduction surgery and some commentators even suggested that there are up to one million people in the UK “requiring” surgery for obesity.

What I find most astonishing about these figures is this; if one million people a year or even 20,000 for that matter, were turning up at accident and emergency departments, all presenting exactly the same symptoms, the focus of attention would soon turn to the cause of the problem and to it's prevention.  Imagine if every year one million computer users needed corrective eye surgery – how long would it take to find the cause of the damage and to rectify it?

It's not that so many morbidly obese people can't get access to surgery but that so many people become obese.  Over-eating is not a medical condition but a behavioural problem produced by ones psychological relationship with food.  Only recently I've treated two clients for weight loss, both of whom had gastric bands fitted at the time of coming to see me and both of whom had found ways to over-eat despite the surgery.

Apart from the cost of surgery, weight related medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoarthritis, depression, sleep apnoea and other respiratory conditions all cost the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds every year.  Another factor to consider is the risk inherent in operating on obese patients and the growing number of compensation claims for complications arising form stomach operations as reported on in an article on the BBC News website

The long term solution to obesity and its associated problems should rely less on drastic, unnecessary and often ineffectual (but always expensive) surgery and more on education and early intervention with hypnotherapy and other psychological treatments to help people change their relationship with food.

Regarding the analogy I used earlier about computer users, how irresponsible would it be for the NHS to continue to offer corrective eye surgery when all that was needed was to change the way computers were used?