Thursday, November 03, 2011

Weight Loss Surgery at Baylor

A fat person who loves the skin they are in is dangerous to a consumerist system. 
excellent article on Psychology today - why loving your body is dangerous



so this came in the mail the other day and I didn't want to read it, but I did. 
And it made me soooooo mad.

first... cute pun on words - I mean, not "she's healthier" (because that would be a lie) but her 'weight' is over. What does that mean - she doesn't weigh anything at all anymore??
but anyway to the meat of the pseudo-article:



First off all three women had surgery in 2010.  Notice this trend those of you considering WLS. Of all the advertising I've seen of WLS recipients the longest time since surgery has been 3 years. Notice they don't show you people 5, 10, 15, 20 years post surgery. That wouldn't sell. Even though the articles says gastric bypass is the oldest, most established surgical procedure... oh really then how about you show someone who had it 10, 20, 30 years ago?
Even the industry admits to having a hard time tracking patients long term - that is attributed that to the fact that many are embarrassed at re-gain and stay away.

THIS IS A HUGE MONEY-MAKING INDUSTRY, With profit margins so high they have almost everyone in their back pocket including the government agencies that should be regulating them and making them include truth in advertising.

truth in adverstising - Oh I make myself laugh.



the following info from the article is in red - response information is mostly from here

"Weight Loss Surgery can improve your quality of life and extend your life expectancy" says Andre Graham, MD

Your bologna has a first name Dr. Graham...

 4.6% of patients die after having bariatric surgeries just within the first year. Most bariatric patients are women of childbearing age and such high surgical risks are not found in any other elective procedure done on such young patients, regardless of their size.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers in the June 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that since 1999, the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity, and hence any deaths “associated” with obesity and extreme obesity in our country, have increased in actual percentages only 0.1% and 0.4%

“Certainly there is no steady increase in mortality with increasing overweight,” according to Dr. Ernsberger and Paul Haskew in a comprehensive review of more than 400 papers in the Journal of Obesity and Weight Regulation. In fact, most show fatness especially as we age, to be particularly favorable for longevity.

also from the advertisement: 

Obesity is linked with high cholesterol and triglycerides, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, menstrual irregularities, reflux, incontinence, depression, back and joint pain.

Well I am glad that in this particular advertisement they chose the word "linked" instead of caused by... because the big picture is being missed here. Thin people have those conditions too, as well as people long term after WLS. Correlation is not causation - I've already covered that bag of worms here. And the improvements that are seen after surgery are due to changes that could have been made without the risk.

Then there was this lovely quote by Sina Martin, MD: 

"For every pound you lose, you gain days of your life."

this is such a flaming bag of BS Dr. Martin, I don't even know where to start. -

By having bariatric surgery a woman increases her risk of dying 45-fold.
Meanwhile, women even just 100 pounds over “ideal” weights are lining up for these surgeries with no idea just how much they’re risking their lives. And parents are signing on the dotted line for their teenage daughters.
More than 8,000 Americans — mostly young women — lost their lives last year from a procedure they were told offers them their only hope for survival. Yet, all of these women would likely still be alive a year later had they not had the surgery.
These surgeries aren’t about saving lives!

Then my ultimate favorite quote was this one:

"So many people think surgery is dangerous and you shouldn't do it until everything else has failed, " Says Frank Felts MD on staff at Baylor. "Weight loss surgery needs to be considered frontline mainstream treatment for weight loss."

what a stupid statement Dr. Felts: 
1. ANY surgery especially under general anesthesia is dangerous - you idiot.
2. What is that statement mean anyway? You don't answer the concern of so many people - Yes many people consider the surgery dangerous - well is it or is it not? 
When I read it to Kyle he said its like saying "So many people think being shot is dangerous." You think by stating the obvious you discredit common sense?
3. WLS surgery should be frontline. Lets for a minute think that accepting healthy behaviors, not caring about your weight and changing society's views of beauty are useless goals (which I don't consider to be the case) and pretend that weight loss is the pinnacle of health.
YOU THINK THAT BYPASSING YOUR STOMACH SHOULD BE THE FRONTLINE TREATMENT????

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?


DR. FELTS???

did you take the Hippocratic oath? First do no harm.

the analogy of "frontline" is the first attack in battle. You think the FIRST THING someone should consider/do for weight loss is to surgically alter their body?

un.freakin. believable.

Want to read some sobering information about weight loss surgery go here: 
  
A study headed by Dr David Flum in Washington which analyzed the case histories of 62,000 gastric bypass patients, found that within the first 30 days after surgery, the death rate had been 1 death every 50 surgeries.  This was considerably higher than even the worst estimate.  Dr Flum commented on CNN news that it was time for "a reality check on this surgery"

"The ethical haze surrounding bariatric procedures is not unknown in surgery, said Laurence B. McCullough, PhD, a professor of medicine and medical ethics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas."


** funny that quote is also from Baylor - guess they've gotten over the moral dilemma.


_________________________________________________________
now for some humor on the subject:



Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)