The General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) released its report on obesity surgeries on Wednesday, September 6. And he’s very critical.
The number of bariatric operations has tripled in ten years, reaching 60,000 operations in 2016, according to the Igas. An explosion that took establishments by surprise, not necessarily equipped with the necessary means to ensure that these heavy operations, last resort treatment for obesity, is going for the best.
Close 2/3 of establishments
In his report, the Igas expressed the wish to have obesity recognized as a chronic disease which affects around seven million people in France.
But, according to her, it is above all necessary to drastically reduce the number of establishments authorized to perform this type of operation in order to improve patient care. The Igas therefore recommends eliminating the possibility of performing this surgery in establishments that do less than 50 or 100 per year. If the threshold of 100 operations per year is retained, two thirds of the 441 establishments which currently practice it, according to the Health Insurance Fund, could no longer carry out it.
Cancer surgery as an example
This reduction would make it possible, according to the Igas, to have better trained medical teams and to improve patient follow-up before and after surgery, as is the case for cancer surgery. The Inspectorate explains that half of the patients are not or insufficiently monitored, although this is a condition for preventing certain risks and for optimizing the effects of surgery. An operation, adds the Igas, of which we do not know the long and very long term effects of these anatomical changes. Effective patient monitoring is therefore essential and necessary.
Weight loss surgery can be done in a number of ways. Either it consists in reducing the gastric capacity, that is to say the volume likely to receive food, or it associates the gastric restriction with the creation of a bypass system in the digestive tract making it possible to decrease the quantity of food intake.
The Minister of Health, Ms Buzyn, was president of the National Cancer Institute. She is at the origin of reduction in the number of establishments authorized to perform cancer surgeries. She could quickly make the same decision for bariatric surgeries based on the recommendations of the Igas. Case to follow.
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