Gastric banding and other weight loss surgical procedures have soared tenfold within the decade
The British Medical Journal reports operations such as gastric banding and bypasses rose from 238 a year to more than 2,543 in 2007.

Researchers from Imperial College London said more obese patients were now aware that surgery could help them.
Data for 2003/04 showed there were 480 procedures, rising to 4,246 in 2008/09.

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said: “These figures just show how bad things have got with the obesity epidemic.

“We have alternative ways of losing weight but when people realise this is a possibility, they could go for it.

“A lot of doctors are also starting to skirt around the rules and not insist on months of lifestyle change and pharmaceutical treatment – instead they are going straight for surgery.”

Peter Sedman, bariatric surgeon and spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons, said: “The number of morbidly obese patients in the UK is increasing rapidly and we need to continue to put even more resources into what is proven to be a successful and cost-effective method of treatment.

Bariatric surgery is performed on people who are dangerously obese and who need to lose weight for medical reasons. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends bariatric surgery for people with ‘morbid obesity’, which means a body mass index of at least 40 or of at least 35 if accompanied by another disease (such as diabetes) which could improve if the patient lost weight, and for whom all non-surgical treatments for weight loss have failed.

Bariatric surgery usually involves:

Reducing the size of the stomach with a surgical band ( gastric banding)
Re-routing the small intestines to a small stomach pouch ( gastric bypass)
Removing a portion of the stomach

Results of a large national study show that nearly three-quarters of obese patients with type 2 diabetes who undergo weight-loss surgery are able to stop insulin and other antidiabetes drugs within six months.

In the Johns Hopkins study of insured, obese, diabetic patients, researchers also found that in the third year following surgery, average annual health care costs per patient decreased by more than 70 percent. The study is published in the Archives of Surgery this month
Makary and his colleagues studied 2,235 adults with Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance from throughout the United States who had type 2 diabetes and underwent bariatric surgery during a four-year period from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2005. The average age of those in the study was 48 years old and 74.5 percent were women. More than 23 percent of participants were insulin dependent while more than 50 percent took metformin hydrochloride to keep their diabetes in check.
Makary and his colleagues found that within one year following surgery, the number of patients dependent on insulin dropped from 524 (23.4 percent) to 101 (5.5 percent). Those on metformin dropped from 1,129 (50.5 percent) to 156 (8.4 percent).
Makary says that while bariatric surgery has been shown to result in long-term weight loss, improved lifestyle and decreased mortality in many patients, its impact on diabetes has not been widely studied

Australian surgeons have been issued with a set of guidelines for carrying out lap-band surgery on severely obese teenagers.
Surgical procedures are not a quick fix for obesity and doctors should refuse to provide such treatment for young teenagers, says the Royal Australasian College for Physicians (RACP
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians has released its advice on when teenagers should be allowed to have the controversial procedure, which involves restricting the stomach by putting a ring around it.

The guidelines endorse the operation for obese teens from the age of 15.

The chairwoman of the committee which developed the guidelines, Professor Louise Bauer, says the surgery should be considered for some teenagers as young as 15 with severe obesity.

“It is not a large number of young people, but there is a small, significant proportion of young people with severe obesity who need additional therapy,” she said.

“We are recommending that weight-loss surgery be considered in young people aged 15 years and over who have finished puberty and who have severe obesity – a body mass index greater than 40.”

Professor Bauer says there is a long-term study going back 14 years that follows up with people who have had lap-band surgery, but there is no long-term follow-up with young people.

“We know that obesity surgery can really improve life longevity for adults who have severe obesity,” she said.

“We have recommended laparoscopic banding surgery for young people because, first of all, there is experience with its use in Australia and also because it is potentially reversible.

“I think that is an important thing to think about when we are dealing with young people, particularly when we are not sure necessarily of the long-term effects