Bariatric weight-loss surgery (like Roux-en-Y gastric bypass) is increasingly performed in children as young as five years old.
Stomach Stapling Kids
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Weight loss surgery for children and adolescents is becoming widespread, performed in children as young as five.
Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is the most common type of procedure, in which they cut out nearly the entire stomach.
Yes, bariatric surgery in pediatric patients results in weight loss, but also has the potential for serious complications, including pulmonary embolism, shock, intestinal obstruction, postoperative bleeding, leaking along the staple line, and severe malnutrition. Complications include death–a mortality rate of 0.5%. That would mean 1 in 200 kids who go under the knife may die.
Infection is identified as the leading cause of death, most often associated with leaking of intestinal contents into the abdominal cavity. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and you have to go in and do another procedure, and if that doesn’t work, we can always try implanting electrodes into their brains, a novel anti-obesity strategy recently reported in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The concept of deep brain stimulation has always been that placing an electrode somewhere in the brain could make people eat less. They just drill two little holes in your skull, snake some electrodes in a few inches, and then tunnel the wires under your scalp into a pulse generator implanted under the skin on your chest. You can’t crank it up past five volts because it induces anxiety and nausea. But even without the nausea, people with electrodes stuck in their brains lost an average of about ten pounds a year.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- E Eskandar. Deep brain stimulation and obesity. J Neurosurg. 2013 Jul;119(1):54.
- D M Whiting, N D Tomycz, J Bailes, L de Jonge, V Lecoultre, B Wilent, D Alcindor, E R Prostko, B C Cheng, C Angle, D Cantella, B B Whiting, J S Mizes, K W Finnis, E Ravussin, M Y Oh. Lateral hypothalamic area deep brain stimulation for refractory obesity: a pilot study with preliminary data on safety, body weight, and energy metabolism. J Neurosurg. 2013 Jul;119(1):56-63.
- J R Treadwell, F Sun, K Schoelles. Systematic review and meta-analysis of bariatric surgery for pediatric obesity. Ann Surg. 2008 Nov;248(5):763-76.
- M D Smith, E Patterson, A S Wahed, S H Belle, P D Berk, A P Courcoulas, G F Dakin, D R Flum, L Machado, J E Mitchell, J Pender, A Pomp, W Pories, R Ramanathan, B Schrope, M Staten, A Ude, B M Wolfe. Thirty-day mortality after bariatric surgery: independently adjudicated causes of death in the longitudinal assessment of bariatric surgery. Obes Surg. 2011 Nov;21(11):1687-92.
- A R Alqahtani, B Antonisamy, H Alamri, M Elahmedi, V A Zimmerman. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in 108 obese children and adolescents aged 5 to 21 years. Ann Surg. 2012 Aug;256(2):266-73.
- B Hofmann. Bariatric surgery for obese children and adolescents: a review of the moral challenges. BMC Med Ethics. 2013 Apr 30;14:18.
- S Kumar, A E Zarroug, J M Swain. Adolescent bariatric surgery. Abdom Imaging. 2012 Oct;37(5):725-9.
Images thanks to Al King via Flickr.
Weight loss surgery for children and adolescents is becoming widespread, performed in children as young as five.
Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is the most common type of procedure, in which they cut out nearly the entire stomach.
Yes, bariatric surgery in pediatric patients results in weight loss, but also has the potential for serious complications, including pulmonary embolism, shock, intestinal obstruction, postoperative bleeding, leaking along the staple line, and severe malnutrition. Complications include death–a mortality rate of 0.5%. That would mean 1 in 200 kids who go under the knife may die.
Infection is identified as the leading cause of death, most often associated with leaking of intestinal contents into the abdominal cavity. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and you have to go in and do another procedure, and if that doesn’t work, we can always try implanting electrodes into their brains, a novel anti-obesity strategy recently reported in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The concept of deep brain stimulation has always been that placing an electrode somewhere in the brain could make people eat less. They just drill two little holes in your skull, snake some electrodes in a few inches, and then tunnel the wires under your scalp into a pulse generator implanted under the skin on your chest. You can’t crank it up past five volts because it induces anxiety and nausea. But even without the nausea, people with electrodes stuck in their brains lost an average of about ten pounds a year.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- E Eskandar. Deep brain stimulation and obesity. J Neurosurg. 2013 Jul;119(1):54.
- D M Whiting, N D Tomycz, J Bailes, L de Jonge, V Lecoultre, B Wilent, D Alcindor, E R Prostko, B C Cheng, C Angle, D Cantella, B B Whiting, J S Mizes, K W Finnis, E Ravussin, M Y Oh. Lateral hypothalamic area deep brain stimulation for refractory obesity: a pilot study with preliminary data on safety, body weight, and energy metabolism. J Neurosurg. 2013 Jul;119(1):56-63.
- J R Treadwell, F Sun, K Schoelles. Systematic review and meta-analysis of bariatric surgery for pediatric obesity. Ann Surg. 2008 Nov;248(5):763-76.
- M D Smith, E Patterson, A S Wahed, S H Belle, P D Berk, A P Courcoulas, G F Dakin, D R Flum, L Machado, J E Mitchell, J Pender, A Pomp, W Pories, R Ramanathan, B Schrope, M Staten, A Ude, B M Wolfe. Thirty-day mortality after bariatric surgery: independently adjudicated causes of death in the longitudinal assessment of bariatric surgery. Obes Surg. 2011 Nov;21(11):1687-92.
- A R Alqahtani, B Antonisamy, H Alamri, M Elahmedi, V A Zimmerman. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in 108 obese children and adolescents aged 5 to 21 years. Ann Surg. 2012 Aug;256(2):266-73.
- B Hofmann. Bariatric surgery for obese children and adolescents: a review of the moral challenges. BMC Med Ethics. 2013 Apr 30;14:18.
- S Kumar, A E Zarroug, J M Swain. Adolescent bariatric surgery. Abdom Imaging. 2012 Oct;37(5):725-9.
Images thanks to Al King via Flickr.
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Stomach Stapling Kids
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
The childhood obesity epidemic is so tragic. It pains me to see insult piled on injury. Too often medical treatments can be worse than the disease. See my video Why Prevention is Worth a Ton of Cure.
Speaking of prevention—what might be the best diet for our young ones? See:
- Heart Disease Starts in Childhood
- How to Prevent Prediabetes in Children
- Childhood Constipation and Cow’s Milk
- Infectobesity: Adenovirus 36 and Childhood Obesity
- Formula for Childhood Obesity
There are complications associated with gastric bypass in adults too. See my video The Dangers of Broccoli?
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