When it becomes obvious that a very important obesity and will not be able to give in by the simple fact of modifying the diet, remains the scalpel… Which obtains surprising results. The Department of Health’s Research, Evaluation Studies and Statistics Directorate (DREES) reveals that obesity surgery has exploded in twenty years.
Obesity surgery is very popular. In France, the number of people who have taken the plunge rose from 2,800 in 1997 to 59,300 in 2016. 80% of women; between 25 and 54 years old.
It is also called – you will often read this incomprehensible name – weight loss surgery. She had, for a long time, a very bad reputation, especially among doctors, drawing her sulphurous image from her practice in questionable pharmacies and from some serious accidents during or after the operation. Opinion has changed, due to the growing number of dramatic obesities that cannot be reduced, which are known to be life-threatening; and above all the excellent results very quickly. The letters of nobility have arrived with his practice in cutting-edge digestive surgery departments.
The technique has also evolved.
There are several types of intervention, quite simple, but which remain true acts of surgery, to prevent excessive food intake. All of them are the result of the most elementary logic.
The first performed consisted in reducing the capacity of the stomach, by about a third, by placing a “gastric ring”, to accelerate the feeling of “filling”. The ring is connected to a fixed capsule located under the skin, which allows the size of the narrowing to be adjusted. This technique is less and less practiced today (less than 4% in 2016 according to the study against 54% ten years earlier.
It will disappear in favor of an intervention which consists in removing two thirds of the stomach and making, with the rest, a sort of tube.
Finally there is a technique, difficult to achieve compared to others, but the results of which are even more spectacular and which is reserved for very obese people. It consists in carrying out an intestinal bypass, a “by pass”, which means that we bypass the assimilation of certain foods in the intestine by accelerating their circulation.
These procedures are done from a simple small hole, last 1 to 3 hours, and under general anesthesia.
The results are spectacular … but at the cost of some inconvenience
Weight loss can be up to 40%, but complications are quite common. We mention the figure of 10%, most of them related to anesthesia, because it remains a not insignificant surgical act. In addition, long-term monitoring, throughout life, to take into account the deficiencies, especially in vitamins, that this too rapid digestion causes.
However, the legitimacy is no longer discussed today in cases of severe obesity and this surgery, initially conceived as a simple modification modulating the intake or absorption of calories, also leads to a spectacular improvement in the secretion of certain hormones. It therefore produces unexpected beneficial effects at the start and well beyond weight loss.
Treatment for diabetes?
For example in diabetes, where more than 80% of patients are overweight, and more than a third are obese. Of these, despite conventional medical treatment, half die of heart disease and about 1⁄4 of stroke, reflecting the level of drug failure. One of the world’s best specialists, Professor Philip SCHAUER, from Cleveland in the United States, speaks of a real paradigm shift: “For more than a century, the treatment of diabetes in obese people has been through tablets and injections. We have just shown indisputably that this surgery can be much more useful“. Immediate translation, mortality decreases by 92% and in 81% of cases and this diabetes disappears in less than 2 years. With nearly 60,000 interventions carried out in 2016, France is, in volume, the second country in the world, far behind the United States, where several hundreds of thousands of interventions are carried out each year. The example of some personalities, like the footballer Diego Maradona or some famous actors, has done much more for the popularity of this surgery than all the medical congresses of the world, but be careful however, we must moderate the enthusiasm, this surgery does not is designed only for people with severe obesity, which is easy to verify.
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