WASHINGTON - Adolescents are less likely to suffer complications from obesity surgery than adults, a reassuring finding because little had been known about the risk facing the small but growing number of teens who opt for it, researchers said on Thursday.
They compared post-surgical complications in 55,192 obese patients age 18 and older who had various types of
bariatric surgery for weight loss with those in 309 obese patients ages 12 to 18 who underwent the procedures.
About 5.5 percent of the adolescents had complications within 30 days of surgery, none of them fatal. By comparison, nearly 10 percent of the adults experienced complications, 0.2 percent fatal, according to the study presented at a meeting of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery in San Diego.
“There’s always been the concern of doing big operations in kids precisely because of the potential complications,” Dr. Esteban Varela of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the study’s lead author, said in a telephone interview.
For very obese adolescents who have exhausted other treatment options, Varela said this type of surgery appears to be a safe and effective option to lose weight, and these younger patients tolerate the surgery better than adults.
Complications included wound infections, reopening of the surgical site, bleeding, pneumonia, heart issues and other problems, the study said.
Soaring rates of obesity
The number of obese young Americans has soared in recent decades, and bariatric surgery has emerged as an alternative to diet and behavioral treatment methods.
The society said about 177,600 people had bariatric surgery in the United States last year. Adolescents account for less than 1 percent of those who get it, but the number of young patients has been growing.
Another study presented at the meeting found that people who have a particular kind of weight-loss surgery get drunk more quickly and take longer to get sober again than others.
Stanford University School of Medicine researchers examined how alcohol affects people who underwent gastric bypass, and found that the surgery altered the way the body metabolized alcohol.
They compared how 19 people who had this surgery were affected by drinking 5 ounces each of red wine to 17 people who had not had the surgery. The gastric bypass patients produced higher readings than the others on breath-alcohol tests and took longer before breath-alcohol levels returned to zero — on average 108 minutes compared to 72 minutes for the others.
The researchers said gastric
bypass surgery changes some functions in the body, including lowering levels of an enzyme responsible for alcohol
metabolism.
Obesity, an increasing problem in many nations worldwide, raises one’s risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers. Other University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researchers studied 63 patients age 65 and older who underwent obesity surgery. These people lost 62 percent of their excess body weight after four years and improved or resolved various obesity-related medical conditions including diabetes, the study found.
Kids handle GBS better?
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