More kids having weight-loss surgery
February 07, 2007
NEW YORK - As the popularity of stomach surgery has skyrocketed
among obese
adults, a growing number of doctors are asking, "Why
not children, too?
The number of kids trying weight-loss
surgery has been tiny. The operations themselves were
risky, with a death rate of about 1 in 50. Children rarely
got that fat, and when they did, pediatricians hesitated
to put the developing bodies under the knife.
But improvements in surgical technique and huge increases
in the number of dangerously obese children
have begun fueling a change of heart.
A group of four hospitals, led by Cincinnati Children's
Hospital Medical Center, are starting a large-scale study
this spring examining how children respond to various types
of weight-loss surgery, including the gastric bypass.
Food and Drug Administration test how teens fare with a
procedure called laparoscopic gastric banding, where an
elastic collar installed around the stomach limits how much
someone can eat.
Similar studies are under way at the University of Illinois
Medical Center in Chicago and at the Morgan Stanley Children's
Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, which recently opened
a weight-loss surgery center for teens. Doctors there expect
to conduct about 50 operations this year.
Children are only considered candidates for surgery after
they have spent six months trying to lose weight
through conventional methods under hospital supervision.
But so far, not a single one has slimmed down enough to
take surgery off the table, said Dr. Jeffrey Zitsman, associate
attending surgeon at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital.
"That battle can only be won in a few instances," he said.
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