Laparoscopic methods now preferred to bariatric surgery for U.S. teens

CHICAGO – About 1 in 3 children in the United States is overweight or obese, a three-fold increase since 1980. Also, diseases associated with obesity previously only seen in adults, such as Type 2 diabetes mellitus, are now increasingly diagnosed in children. Effective weight loss strategies are needed to curtail these changes, and bariatric surgery may be an effective strategy for achieving significant weight reduction in adolescents who are already morbidly obese, according to the study background. Researchers found, however, that inpatient bariatric procedures among adolescents appear to have plateaued since 2003 to about 1,000 procedures annually. Instead, the preferred type of operation has changed to minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures from open procedures, according to a study published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

Deirdre C. Kelleher, M.D., and colleagues from the Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C., conducted a study to determine the current rate of inpatient bariatric surgical procedures among adolescents (individuals ages 10 to 19 years) and to analyze national trends of use from 2000 to 2009. The authors used discharge data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Kids’ Inpatient Database from 2000 through 2009.

“Our study confirms the previously reported growth in bariatric procedures from 2000 to 2003 among adolescents. Despite the suggestion that adolescent bariatric surgery has increased in popularity and continued to grow exponentially, inpatient surgery use leveled off from 2003 through 2009, reaching a plateau of about 1,000 procedures annually,” the authors comment.

The inpatient bariatric procedure rate increased from 0.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 2.3 per 100,000 in 2003 (328 vs. 9Zapatillas Trail Running