What is obesity and who suffers from it?
Obesity is a serious disease that affects men and women equally. It is known that the patient suffers from it when he/she calculates his/her body mass index (BMI) and it exceeds 30. Eating habits, sedentary lifestyles and other conditioning factors make a large part of the population vulnerable to obesity.
Specialists use a parameter to establish whether or not a person suffers from obesity. This consists of what is known as BMI. To calculate it, weight in kg must be divided by height squared in meters (BMI = kg / m2). There are different diagnoses of obesity according to the patient’s BMI:
> 30 = Obesity
> 35 = Obesity type II
> 40 = Morbid obesity
It is important to consult a specialist in General Surgery if any doubts about this disease arise. Obesity causes other serious pathologies such as respiratory failure, sleep apnea, heart disease, among others. Not to mention the strong relationship between obesity and the appearance of several types of cancer.
Medical or surgical treatment, which is better?
Scientific evidence dictates that not all patients with obesity should undergo surgery. The Surgical Institute of Andalusia establishes as a priority those patients with a BMI greater than 35 and with an associated disease, and those with more than 40 BMI without associated disease.
In any case, the first thing to do is to apply a medical treatment that combines a change in the patient’s lifestyle, diet and physical exercise. However, there is a certain weight threshold at which it is not possible, despite strict dieting, to maintain the loss.
When this happens, we have restrictive surgical techniques: gastric sleeve or vertical gastrectomy and gastric bypass. Restrictive techniques receive this name because they limit the amount of food ingested or the absorption of nutrients by the body.
After bariatric surgery, what is the postoperative period like?
Since the operation is performed laparoscopically, pain is minimal and recovery is quite fast. The following day, the patient will start walking. Between the second and third day, he/she will begin to drink small amounts of liquids and on the fourth day he/she will be discharged. He/she will be able to return to work after two weeks, and from the first day of discharge from the hospital he/she is advised to walk at least one hour daily.
Can the patient become obese again?
Scientific evidence has shown that the only treatment capable of maintaining weight loss over time is bariatric surgery. The important thing is to make a correct selection of the patient and to detect any type of disorder that could guarantee bad results.
For this purpose, the team of professionals includes a clinical psychologist, a specialist in eating disorders, who can help the patient before, during and after the surgery. With proper follow-up and re-education, the patient is unlikely to fall back into obesity.