August 23, 2017 – Early Intervention

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Anchor lead: Should obesity surgery be employed earlier? Elizabeth Tracey reports

The more obese someone is when they choose to have obesity, or bariatric surgery, the less likely they are to have a good outcome, defined as a BMI of less than 30, a year later, a recent study concluded. Kimberley Steele, a bariatric surgeon at Johns Hopkins, says what’s really important is how issues like diabetes, known as comorbidities, resolve after surgery.

Steele: We tell our patients that they may never get down to a normal weight, that they might hit a BMI of 25 to 30, which is classified as overweight. That’s not our goal. Our goal is resolution of the comorbidities that exist with obesity. That said, I think their point is very valid. Bariatric surgery is done over a wide range of BMI extremes. What they’re trying to say is that we need to intervene sooner, which makes sense.   :31

Steele says that anyone with a BMI that’s over 25 and keeps rising should begin interventions to stop that trajectory. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.