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Essay On Co-Morbidity

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Those who are significantly overweight suffer from a host of life-threatening, obesity related health conditions, referred to as co-morbidities. The most common of these include Type 2 diabetes mellitus (adult onset diabetes), high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The higher an individual's body mass index (BMI), the more prevalent and severe these co-morbidities become. The "super obese" - those with a BMI over 50 - are at particularly high risk. Achieving sustained weight loss as well as resolving related health conditions are the two main objectives of weight loss surgery at our San Francisco practice.

Options for the Super Obese

Gastric bypass surgery (Roux-en-Y) is the traditional surgical approach to helping the super obese reduce their BMI and eliminate related health conditions. In …show more content…

While both duodenal switch and gastric bypass result in significant weight loss and resolution of related health concerns, recent data indicates that - independent of weight loss - duodenal switch surgery produces a marked increase in the rate of resolution of co-morbidities.

Evidence Supports Duodenal Switch

In an extensive 3 year post-operative study of 350 super obese weight loss surgery patients, Vivek N. Prachand, MD, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois, compared gastric bypass to duodenal switch (DS) in terms of how effectively each resolved several life-threatening health conditions. Of the participants, 198 were DS patients and 152 were gastric bypass patients. The study found the following rates of co-morbidity resolution:

Diabetes - 100% of DS patients compared to 60% of gastric bypass patients High blood pressure - 68% of DS patients compared to 38% of gastric bypass patients High cholesterol - 72% of DS patients compared to 26% of gastric bypass

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