Gastric bypass effectively treats obesity and diabetes in adolescents: Study
POSTED January 6, 2009 - 19:17 | POSTED BY Nisha Bhatia
Last edited by Shikha Patial on January 6, 2009 - 21:10
Gastricdefine bypass surgery or procedure is one that is used to treat morbid obesity. Morbid obesity causes accumulation of excessive fat inside the body and this augments the Body Mass Indexdefine (BMI) of the body. Such a condition can pose serious health problems.
Gastric bypass surgery comes under bariatric surgery- a broad category of procedures, which include variety of treatments for morbid obesity, excluding procedures like liposuction and abdominoplasty. Bariatric surgery is also known as weight loss surgery.
In gastric bypass surgery, the physicians do a marked reduction in the functional volume of the stomach. This way, restricting the size of the stomach helps in controlling the quantity of food one eats.
The study was led by Dr. Thomas H. Inge, an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Lapband method was used in this study. Lapband method is a technique in which an adjustable band is positioned inside the body of an obese in a way that it blocks most of his stomach’s functional area. This helps in controlling the amount of food the body metabolizes and absorbs.
Inge and his team observed 78 teens with type 2 diabetesdefine to study the effect of gastric bypass surgery on the teens. 67 out of 78 participants were given usual care for controlling their diabetes problem whereas 11 participants underwent gastric bypass surgery.
After the surgery, researchers found that those 11 teens had lost nearly 34 percent of their body weight, their diabetes had reduced significantly, their blood pressure, insulindefine, glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride levels had improved remarkably.
On contrary, participants who were given usual care had lost only two pounds and still needed medication for diabetes at the end of the study.
Inge stated, “Our study found that, in most cases, teens can lose one-third of their weight and come off diabetes medications with remission of their diabetes one year after bypass surgery. This is certainly not the case for similar diabetic teenage patients who did not undergo surgery."
However, Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine asserted that the study has successfully proved that bariatric surgery is an effective method to cure obesity problems among teens, but it may not treat the root causes of the obesity epidemic.
The January issue of Pediatrics carried the report of this study’s findings.
