Update: NIH consensus conference. Gastrointestinal surgery for severe obesity.

The 1991 Consensus Development Panel was instrumental both in establishing criteria for selection of patients for surgical treatment and in recognition of operations that have been shown to be safe and reasonably effective in the long term. The Panel may have been premature in endorsement of any form of banded gastroplasty because the long-term weight loss results of these procedures are frequently disappointing. It seems likely that a consensus panel on the same subject would be worthwhile in the next decade to carefully evaluate such procedures as biliopancreatic bypass and the various laparoscopic techniques for gastric banding. In 1996 surgery remains the only effective treatment for patients with medically severe (morbid) obesity.