Bariatric Surgery

I’m sure you are familiar with “direct-to-consumer” advertising — or DTC. That’s what the prescription medical products industry calls the practice of advertising directly to consumers.

The goal of this practice is to get consumers to request a prescription from their physician.

This type of advertising — which has only been going on since the early 1990s — now dominates the airwaves. The most common ads are for drugs that treat “ED,” insomnia, high cholesterol, and allergies. I’m sure you’ve seen them.

Well, I just learned that this same type of advertising is now being used to promote bariatric (weight-loss) surgery. Allergan (a pharmaceutical company) purchased the Lap-Band System from Inamed Health earlier this year and now wants to get the word out.

This type of weight-loss surgery ties a band around the stomach rather than using staples to make the stomach smaller.

This advertising campaign is one of the medical industry’s first TV campaigns for a surgical procedure. It’s a 60 second testimonial spot that will air on both the national networks and national cable stations between now and the end of the year. The ads give a toll-free number to call and a website to visit. A spokesperson for the company said the responses have exceeded expectations.

To be blunt, I don’t agree with this type of advertising. The medical treatment world is hugely complex, so to expect consumers to evaluate and then request a prescription based on a 60 second advertisement is fraught with problems. I’ll discuss these problems in future blogs.

Bariatric surgery is very serious stuff. In fact, in my course on weight loss, I suggest it as the very last thing to consider — and only after exhausting the primary recommendations I offer.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reviewed the discharge records on 86,520 patients who underwent bariatric (weight-loss) surgery during 2002 to 2004 in 17 states.

Here’s what they found out.

The overall mortality (death) rate was 0.19% or about 2 out of every 1000 cases and about 40% experienced various levels of complications once they returned home.

However, the risk of complications, such as bleeding and infection, varied drastically between hospitals. Complications were 66% less likely in highly-rated hospitals than in poorly-rated ones.

These results are obviously a concern to patients, but they also impact the folks paying for these procedures. The average bariatric surgery, with no complications, costs about $25,000. However, this cost jumps to $36,000 if there is a complication while the patient is in the hospital, and to $65,000 if the complication requires the patient to return to the hospital after going home.

What these statistics say to me is that morbidly obese patients should exhaust all other opportunities to lose weight before considering weight-loss surgery. Then, if all other methods fail and weight-loss surgery is a possibility, they should do some serious research before taking this drastic step.

Basically I don’t agree with this quote that was included in the article I read about this study — “Bariatric surgery is the only currently effective treatment we have for the morbidly obese.” (by Samantha Collier, senior vice president of medical affairs at Health Grades, Inc.). This just isn’t true.

Sure, the goofy approaches to losing weight (e.g., any diet, diet pills, hypnosis) don’t work. But there are definitely approaches that do.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

Here’s an indication of what’s going to happen to the bariatric (weight-loss) surgery market over the next few years.

NewHope Bariatrics just landed $18.5 million in financing to expand their operations by opening surgical centers throughout the country.

This means that some financial folks did some serious research and concluded that bariatric surgery was a huge and growing market.

It certainly has been in recent years (175,000 procedures in 2005 which is 8 times the number in 1999).

Why is this happening?

Two reasons:

* The potential market is growing with more people becoming morbidly obese.
* Weight-loss diets and prescription weight-loss drugs have such a poor track record that physicians are seeking new therapies — and bariatric surgery is the only other option they believe is available.

Not true. For over 100 years people have used another weight-loss method with great results. But, its not supported by millions of dollars of investment so few people know about it.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition and Fitness