Surgery for obese patients ‘effective’

Patients with severe obesity risk a range of illnesses due to their condition, leading to a massive growth in surgery.

More operations have been carried out in Yorkshire by the NHS than anywhere else although health chiefs are now cutting numbers to save money.

The National Bariatric Surgery Registry examined 8,700 cases from 2008-10. It found three quarters of the patients could not climb three flights of stairs without resting, a third had high blood pressure, a quarter diabetes and a fifth high cholesterol. A year after surgery, patients had on average lost 58 per cent of excess weight.

Cases of diabetes, high cholesterol and sleep disturbance had fallen by half and high blood pressure by a third. After two years, 86 per cent of those affected by diabetes no longer had it.

Surgeons say the figures offer further evidence obesity surgery is “one of the most clinically effective, safe and cost effective treatments available”, claiming costs to the NHS could be recouped within three years.

GP David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said family doctors, who will soon buy most NHS services under Government reforms, had an “immense opportunity” to enable more patients to undergo surgery.

“Not only is this audit important in detailing the problems associated with obesity, it also outlines the remarkable benefits that bariatric surgery is routinely inducing,” he said.

John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: “This audit provides unquestionable evidence that bariatric surgery is cost-effective when the billions of pounds spent in the NHS treating obesity related problems are taken into account.

“It is a false economy to cut funding for this type of surgery. Any short-term savings are tiny compared with the real ongoing cost of treating obese patients.”