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Going for obesity surgery? Think again!
Each year more and more people are undergoing the obesity surgery that helps them lose the extra abdominal fat. Looking at the past trends the number will easily cross 130,000 this year. The latest statistics reveal a higher risk of hospitalization and mortality for such patients.
A team led by David R. Flum of the University of Washington at Seattle analyzed the nationwide Medicare data of 16,155 patients who underwent the surgery from 1997 to 2002. The results indicated that 2 percent of the patients died within a month after the surgery. Nearly 3 percent died in the first three months and 5 percent in the first year after the operation.
The second study that was conducted by a team of experts led by David S. Zingmond of the University of California at Los Angeles indicated that the likelihood of hospitalization more than doubles after the surgery than before it.
Data from a sample of 60,077 California patients who were operated from 1995 to 2004 revealed that nearly 20 percent were hospitalized within one year after they underwent surgery. The percentage of people who were hospitalized in the year before they underwent surgery stood at eight. Most of the hospitalizations that took place were due to the complications arising out of surgery.
The advocates of the obesity surgery argue that the risks would be higher if patients especially those suffering from diabetes and hypertension refrained from the surgery. Efforts, however, are being made to make the procedures safer.
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Written
by :
Jun Shen | Published on :
16:06:01
EST
Wed, 19 Oct 2005 |
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