January 2009
Newsletter from Dr David Ashton
Medical Director, Healthier Weight
Hello!
As the New Year starts many people who are fed up with the annual ritual of dieting, losing weight and replacing it, will begin to consider a surgical option. The problem is that there is still a remarkable amount of stigma about weight loss surgery, even though celebrities like Fern Britton have done a lot to make it more acceptable. Why is this?
One of the most common myths is that obesity surgery is extremely dangerous. Every time an obesity “expert” appears on radio, they recite the same tired old mantra that surgery is very risky and should only be considered as a “last resort”. This is absurd for two reasons:
Firstly, obesity surgery is actually remarkably safe. If you consider gastric banding for a moment, in expert hands the risk of dying during a banding procedure is as close to zero as it is possible to get. Professor Franco Favretti – who works with us here in the UK – has done more than 3500 gastric bands and has never had a death. Of course, any surgical intervention carries a risk, but gastric banding is probably less dangerous than many other common procedures – such as hip replacement – about which most people don’t give a second thought. When did you last hear anyone say that having a facelift is an option of last resort?! Even with more complex procedures such as gastric bypass, the risk of dying is low – (approximately 1:1000) – and must be set against the risk of doing nothing.
The mantra that obesity surgery should only ever be considered as a last resort is also absurd because surgery is the only form of treatment available to those who have failed to lose weight any other way. It isn’t so much that surgery is the last resort as that it is the only resort. It’s blindingly obvious. What else is there?
Of course you might point to newspaper reports about patients dying during obesity surgery, which for anyone thinking about having it done is worrying. But remember that press reporting on such matters is extremely biased. The sad fact is that if enough people have surgery of any kind, there will be occasional tragedies which in most cases cannot be avoided. Worldwide more than 400,000 patients have undergone gastric banding, the majority of whom have done extremely well. The problem is that the press and media are not interested in reporting such unfortunate events for patients having a gallbladder removed or a hip replaced. But as soon as it happens to an obese patient, it makes the headlines. It has been said – and rightly I think – that obesity is the last socially acceptable form of prejudice and this is nowhere more apparent than in the attitudes of press and media towards obesity surgery.
The situation is not unlike that which existed for cosmetic surgery a decade ago. Then, anyone who had had a breast implant or a facelift, went to extraordinary measures to hide the fact. Nowadays almost no one is embarrassed about having cosmetic enhancement – there are whole TV programmes dedicated to nothing else.
So as we start another year let’s hope that the press and media start to grow up and that the coverage of important topics like weight loss surgery becomes more, adult, more factual and less sensational.
Happy New Year!
Dr David Ashton BSc, MD, PhD
