Weight Loss Surgery - Part I

One third of the adult population of the United States of America is considered overweight. Of those 127 million Americans, 60 million of them are classified as obese. 15% of those are what is known as morbidly obese. Obesity has become a national epidemic. ObesityinAmerica.org reports that in 2004, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ranked obesity as the number one health threat facing America. Obesity is not just an “adult epidemic”; between 16 and 33 percent of all children are obese. Many obese adults have struggled with weight issues for the majority of their lives.
Severe obesity is a chronic condition that many in the medical profession proclaim is difficult to treat.

Bariatric surgery, often referred to as Weight Loss Surgery or WLS for short, can be a viable option for people who are morbidly obese. In the United States, the number of weight loss operations increased by 800 percent between the years 1998 and 2004. Between 2005 and 2006, it climbed another 11 percent, increasing from approximately 180,000 procedures to more than 200,000. The fastest growth of this surgery occurred among adults aged 55 to 64; perhaps because weight related health considerations for this age group are the most acute.