Posts Tagged ‘bariatric surgery’

The newest case history in the New England Journal of Medicine offers a vivid picture of some important pitfalls after bariatric surgery. We learned a new diagnosis – bachelor scurvy. But most of all, it gives a vivid reminder of the importance of social support after surgery. Leg Weakness, Falling, and Anemia Susan Bennett and colleagues […]

Waiting times for bariatric surgery have nearly doubled in a decade. That’s one of the findings from a study that will soon appear in Annals of Surgery. Health insurers drive most of these delays according to the authors. But those longer wait times apparently do nothing to improve the outcomes or prevent complications. The result is […]

It’s hard to say exactly why we’ve put so many hurdles in the way of effective obesity care. But a new analysis in Medical Care shows us that these are costly hurdles. David Kim, David Arterburn, Sean Sullivan, and Anirban Basu find that cost sharing for bariatric surgery is a bad idea. Payers lose $7 […]

Bariatric centers of excellence now perform most bariatric surgeries. So if all those centers are excellent, how much does it matter where someone has a surgery performed? Quite a bit. A new review by Tapan Mehta and David Allison in JAMA offers an important conclusion. Accreditation might be a good idea, but by itself, it doesn’t […]

The picture is stark. Writing in the Atlantic, Olga Khazan says bariatric surgery is out of reach where people need it the most. The five states with the highest rates of self-reported BMI in the range of obesity are WV, MS, AL, AR, and LA. But not one of those states requires insurers to cover […]

Beautiful honesty is a gift for an ugly world. And yet again, Roxane Gay offers us this gift with a well-crafted essay on her decision to have gastric sleeve surgery in January this year. Mixed Emotions About a Harsh Reality This was not an easy decision. Gay describes the final straw: After more than 15 […]

Recently, we wrote of deep concern about teens with severe obesity who are denied effective obesity care. For insight into why this matters so much, consider the experiences of Maria Caprigno, a proud OAC member and brilliant patient advocate. Her story is one of incredible persistence for health at a very young age. I first […]

Two bits of recent research add to our concern about care denied to teens with severe obesity. One study compares bariatric surgery to intensive medical care. Teens with type 2 diabetes and severe obesity had much better outcomes with bariatric surgery. But another shows that very few teens (0.7%) with severe obesity actually receive the […]

This story is profoundly sad. We were reading about a recent decision by the USPSTF to affirm a broad recommendation for intensive lifestyle programs for obesity. The decision is a good one. Reporting on it by the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) unfortunately is not so good. AAFP presents the views of someone they […]

Shawn Alvarado is not healthy and he knows it. He has a sedentary job, working as a dispatcher for a moving company. Now 53 years old, he’s been gaining weight ever since he was a teen. He weighs almost 500 pounds. He has heart disease, diabetes, and sleep apnea. Without a gastric bypass, his cardiologist […]