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Super Obesity Related Deaths
New research on Super Obesity Related Deaths indicates that super obese veterans and those patients who have more chronic disease are significantly more prone to die within a year of bariatric surgery. This is in accordance to an article entitled, Predictors of Long-term Mortality After Bariatric Surgery Performed in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, published in the Archives of Surgery, a magazine of JAMA in 2009.
Considering the latest study, the patients who have class 3 obesity, also known as “super obesity”, are a great deal more likely to die within a year of bariatric medical procedures. Super obesity is defined as somebody having a Body mass index (BMI) of over 40 or greater.
The problem with past studies with regard to bariatric medical procedures was the reality that most of the studies was completed on young women undergoing those procedures. Their health was not impacted as much as they were more able to take the medical procedures with a very low incidence of morbidity. Conversely, this study demonstrates that for an older research group involving the death rate was much higher within one year of the surgery.
Super Obesity Related Deaths
In this study done by David Arterburn, M.D., M.P.H., of Group Health Research Institute, Seattle, and contemporaries examined at all the factors that affected the physical condition of over 800 individuals who had undergone bariatric procedures in the range of 2000 and 2006. The BMI was very high, at an average of 48.7. The research group was additionally older at an average of 54 years old. There as a total of 73% men.
The authors of the study offered a few thoughts into the reason they believe that the morbidity rates may be more elevated in the super obese. They postulate that the procedures are inherently more treacherous due to the large amounts of abdominal adipose tissue that creates opportunities for blood clotting and wound problems. Also there is the aspect that the years of chronic disease raises the probability of loss of life from the toll it takes on the body. Factors in comorbidity such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic objective pulmonary disease should be looked at thoroughly prior to surgery.
Super Obesity Related Deaths Medical Journal reference:
1. David Arterburn; Edward H. Livingston; Tracy Schifftner; Leila C. Kahwati; William G. Henderson; Matthew L. Maciejewski. Predictors of Long-term Mortality After Bariatric Surgery Performed in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. Archives of Surgery, 2009; 144 (10): 914-920
Summary of information on Super Obesity Related Deaths from article by JAMA and Archives Journals.
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