Weight-loss surgery provides dramatic benefits in teens

A majority of participants in our study had marked improvements with respect to weight, obesity-related coexisting conditions, and quality of life… we found remission of diabetes in 95% of participants who had type 2 diabetes at baseline in our study… this result, coupled with the findings of normalization of elevated blood pressure in almost 80% of our participants, leads us to hypothesize that adolescents may have a greater potential than adults for reversal of the cardiometabolic consequences of obesity.

After their operations, the teenagers lost an average of 90 pounds.

Bariatric surgery reversed key obesity-related health problems in severely obese teenagers, according to the largest and longest study of the benefits and risks of the procedure in adolescents. In study patients, it was 53 on average before surgery.

In this Wednesday, November 4, 2015 photo, Miranda Taylor, 20, poses outside Christ College of Nursing and Health Science in Cincinnati.

Before the surgery, 75 per cent of the teens had unhealthy blood fat levels, but in two-thirds of the teens, the issues vanished. In addition, 40 percent of the participants had high blood pressure; afterward, it returned to normal in three-quarters of them.

Most participants in the study also dramatically reduced their blood pressure after surgery, and had improved kidney function and less blood fat.

Ms Taylor had surgery when she was 16 and weighed 265 pounds.

Thirteen per cent had type 2 diabetes beforehand, with the condition disappearing in more than 90 per cent of cases, the researchers revealed.

The study of extremely obese teens found that, three years after either gastric bypass surgery or a procedure called sleeve gastrectomy, the average patient had lost 27 percent of his or her original weight. The researchers added that there was one death that was not related to surgery. He said families and doctors need to recognize when children’s weights are spiraling out of control before they become dangerously obese.

Still, after three years most remained obese – just 5 percent achieved a normal weight. I knew that this might not get me down to like model-size, which I wasn’t concerned about.

Lead author Dr. Thomas Inge, who directs an obesity surgery program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said seeing diabetes and other obesity-related health problems resolved was remarkable and gratifying. “I feel awesome. It’s like a new life”, she says.

Adults who have had weight-loss surgery have shown similar results in different studies, but the long-term effects of such procedures in teens hadn’t been investigated until now.

His team published the findings online November 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine, to coincide with a planned presentation of the findings at the Obesity Week annual meeting in Los Angeles. A person with a BMI of 25 is typically considered overweight, and the threshold for obesity begins at a BMI of 30.