"This operation is reserved for morbidly obese people, not the pleasantly plump," Morton said. "Being morbidly obese carries a pretty significant risk of premature death, in large part because of heart disease. The risk of premature death for the morbidly obese is about three times the risk of the general population."
Though for most obese people, the most compelling reasons to lose weight have to do with improvements in lifestyle, the health benefits are tremendous, Williams said. He expects that the new study will encourage physicians to discuss the surgery with obese patients who are at risk of heart disease. And he hopes that the findings will push insurance companies that deny coverage for the procedure to change their policies.
More than 15 million people in the United States are morbidly obese, as measured by body mass index, which is a person's weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A BMI over 40 qualifies as morbidly obese, according to National Institutes of Health guidelines for bariatric surgery. So, for example, a person whose height is 5 feet 8 inches and weight is 265 pounds would have a BMI of 40 and would be considered morbidly obese.
Morton, Williams and Stanford colleagues knew from earlier studies by others that gastric bypass lowered many risk factors for heart disease but no large-scale studies had investigated the effects of the surgery on all three newer heart-disease markers - C-reactive protein, lipoprotein A and homocysteine, Williams said. They set out to study the effects and found improvements across the board.
"All of the values improved to where they were no longer in the abnormal range. In other words, they normalized," Morton said.
The most significant decrease in risk was seen in C-reactive
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Contact: Rosanne Spector
rosanne.spector@stanford.edu
650-725-5374
Stanford University Medical Center
30-Jun-2005