Surgical intervention for the severely obese.

Severe obesity is a grave disease in the U.S. as well as other industrialized nations. This disease has many ramifications on both an individual and social levels. It affects 12.5 million people in the U.S., according to national survey data. The health risks of severe obesity include hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, cardiomyopathy, diabetes, hypoventilation disorders, increased risk of malignancy, cholelithiasis, degenerative arthritis, infertility, and psychosocial impairments. Medical weight reduction programmes have rarely achieved long-term success. Most authorities now agree that bariatric surgery is the treatment of choice for well-informed and motivated obese patients with acceptable operative risks, who strongly desire substantial weight loss or who have severe impairments because of their weight. Surgery is indicated for patients with a BMI greater than 40 kg/m2, or for those with serious medical co-morbidities and a BMI greater than 35 kg/m2. Three procedures, the adjustable silicone gastric banding (ASGB), vertical gastric banding (VBG), and gastric bypass (GB), have produced the best results to date. Each of these procedures is much more effective than dietary therapies. Each has advantages and disadvantages, with GB producing greater sustained weight loss in the long-term, with a slightly higher risk of metabolic complications. All can be done with surprisingly low operative mortality. The pronounced weight loss induced with these operations can relieve and bring co-morbid diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, once thought to be only barely controllable, into full long-term remission.