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More Teens Having Weight-Loss Surgery

March 5, 2007

Childhood Obesity • Most Kids' Meals Exceed Suggested Daily Intake • Safeway, Warner Bros. Promote Healthful Kids' Food • Childhood Obesity Holding Steady, Study Finds • Doctor Offers Antidote To 'Super-Size Me' Diet • Spanish Language TV Linked To Latino Child Obesity • States Get Poor Grades on School Food • More Sleep Time May Cut Child Obesity • Kellogg Pledges Food Marketing Changes • Consumer Group Scolds Nickelodeon • CSPI: School Food Plan Should be Law of the Land • TV Food Ads Make Obese Kids Hungrier • Study Finds Food is Most-Advertised Kids Product • Senate Eyes Stricter School Lunch Standards • More Teens Having Weight Loss Surgery • Sedentary Teens More Likely to Have Higher Blood Pressure • Poll: Obesity Top Health Issue for Kids • Pediatricians Want Stricter Controls on Junk Food Ads • Brits Take Action on Junk Food Ads Aimed at Kids --- • More ...

More and more teens are turning to weight-loss surgery, even though the overall number remains small.

The number of adolescents undergoing bariatric surgery for weight loss more than tripled between 2000 and 2003, but weight-loss in adolescents remains an uncommonly performed procedure, and teens represent less than 1 percent of patients having such procedures, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Most obese teens are still treated through diet and behavioral methods, according to background information in the article. However, weight-loss surgery is increasingly considered an option for teens who have health problems related to their weight.

A common type of bariatric surgery is gastric bypass, which involves sectioning off a small portion of the stomach into a pouch that that bypasses the first part of the small intestine and connects directly to the lower portions. Another common option is gastric banding, in which surgeons place a band-like device around the stomach to divide it into two smaller compartments.

Researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey used data from a nationwide sample of community hospitals to determine the annual rate of bariatric surgery among adolescents (age 10 to 19) and adults (age 20 and older) between 1996 and 2003.

Each patient's age, sex, length of hospital stay and charges from the hospital, as well as whether he or she died in the hospital, was also available from the same database.

During those years, 566 bariatric surgeries were performed on adolescents at the sample hospitals. This represents a national estimate of 2,744 adolescents undergoing such procedures, the researchers note. The rate of bariatric surgeries among adolescents did not change significantly between 1996 and 2000 but more than tripled between 2000 and 2003. Still, however, only 771 teens underwent the procedure in 2003—representing less than .7 percent of the 105,473 bariatric procedures performed that year.

Complication rates were similar for adolescents and adults. Respiratory complications were the most common, affecting 84.4 percent of adolescents and 67.5 percent of adults. On average, teens spent less time in the hospital after bariatric surgery (3.2 days vs. 3.5 days).

No adolescents and .2 percent of adults died in the hospital in 2003.

"Similar to adults, most adolescents underwent gastric bypass, had private insurance and underwent surgery at similar hospital types," the authors write. "In contrast to adults, adolescents were less likely to be female and had fewer major comorbid conditions," or co-occurring health problems.

"In conclusion, while relatively few bariatric procedures were performed in adolescents in the last decade, this study suggests that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of bariatric procedures in adolescents nationwide in the current decade," they continue.

"Because the long-term metabolic and psychological consequences of bariatric surgery may differ between adolescents and adults, this trend toward greater use of bariatric surgery in teenagers emphasizes the importance of rigorous outcomes research in this area."

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