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Is There Any Side Effect for Obesity Surgery?
 

Close to 15 millions Americans are considered extremely obese and these people are at least 100 pounds (or 45 kilograms) overweight. Obesity has become a major health issue globally and many countries have already implemented policies to deal with it.

Being closely linked to diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and stroke, obesity is also known to be a risk factor for heart disease and certain types of cancer.

When dieting, medications and exercise cannot reduce sufficient weight, doctors will eventually recommend their obese patients to go for surgery, including stomach stapling known as gastric bypass and less invasive stomach banding. With the help of surgery, patients tend to reduce between 15 and 25 percent of their original weight and this will also improve diabetes dramatically, and so is the risk of heart disease.

According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, more than 1.2 million American patients have undergone the surgery in the past decade; and in 2008 alone, there were some 220,000 cases.

Nevertheless, doctors actually consider obesity as protective against bone-weakening osteoporosis, which could be the only positive thing you will ever heard about too much fat. In fact, doctors have long noted that the radical weight loss can actually speed up the bone turnover. Recent studies also showed that adult’s hip density dropped up to 10 percent a year after gastric bypass.

Researchers from Mayo Clinic revealed at the endocrinology meeting in June 2009 that chances patients’ bones to thin enough to break in the years after surgery might be double the average person’s risk, and these patients are more likely to break a hand or foot.

Such discovery though is still considered as preliminarily, has alarmed health experts to pay attention especially to those obese teenagers who are in their key bone-building years. Stomach banding is expected not to cause much thinning because it does not greatly alter nutrient absorption. However, no one knows whether teen bones would react similarly. One should not forget that almost half of peak bone mass develops during adolescence.

In order to find out whether such changes could translate into fractures, the researchers compared the medical records of nearly 300 adults who have had bariatric surgery with similarly aged Minnesotans who have not.

Of the 142 surgery recipients studied, 25 percent of them experienced at least one fracture in the following years. 6 years after the surgery, that particular group had twice the average risk. Meanwhile, the group also had 3 times more risk of developing hand and foot fractures than their Minnesota neighbors.

These fractures are not usually related to osteoporosis. Bone-metabolism experts also rule out the possibility that the patients might start exercising and just fall down frequently.

Many surgeons were surprised with the finding, as they have yet to see a significant fracture problem in their own practices.
While surgeons will recommend their patients to take some extra calcium and Vitamin D, only about half would actually follow such advice. Previous research has actually suggested that higher doses may be required, as the obese tend to start out deficient in Vitamin D.

What the researchers intend to do next is to compare the patients who fracture with people of the same weight to see why extra calcium is needed. Does surgery alter the hormones and other factors that keep bones strong, and cause the bone mass to alter?

For now, the experts’ advise to the obese patients is: do not skip checkup that monitors bone health and be treated aggressively for nutrient deficiencies.

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