Research Says Bariatric Surgery might be helpful at the young age

Obesity is not only a mere condition of excessive fat but is a severe disease. What’s astonishing is the increasing number of young patients suffering from adverse health effects of obesity. Obesity at an early age can be due to a lot of different factors, ranging from an unhealthy lifestyle to heredity. The medical solutions for treating obesity have evolved in time, including bariatric surgery. According to a recent study, researchers have found that bariatric surgery for obesity is more effective for patients who developed the disorder early, by the age of 20, than those who developed later in life.

The research included 4,026 adult patients suffering from obesity where the investigation was carried out to spot the difference in the effects of the bariatric treatment among people with different body mass index (BMI) at the age of 20. This result was published in the journal Diabetes Care, which is based on the data from the Swedish Obese Subjects study (SOS).

Researchers say an early treatment for obesity is always advantageous and advised. People with early onset of obesity have often found with their disorder for a long time before the surgery is considered. It has also been speculated that bariatric can tend to be less effective in these patients due to their longer exposure to the effects of obesity.

Johanna Andersson Assarsson from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said, “ We were somewhat surprised at the results. Since the group that had already developed obesity by the age of 20 had been exposed to obesity and its risks for longer periods. We’d expected that bariatric surgical treatment in these participants would be less effective in terms of weight loss and obesity-related sequelae than in the other group. But it wasn’t like that.” Assarsson added, “ Here, we show that’s not the case. And we think it’s important that this information reaches people considering bariatric surgery for obesity and also health professionals who treat patients with obesity.”

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