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The dangerous connection between surgery and obesity
No one I know would say that obesity doesn’t carry some risks.
If I had to sum them all up, I’d point to the fact that it shortens a person’s healthspan. In other words, it shortens the length of time you get to live without a serious or debilitating illness affecting your quality of life.
When the CDC and the National Institutes of Health characterize the public health threat that obesity poses, it’s mainly in terms of diseases.
Type 2 diabetes, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, heart disease and stroke, asthma, and cancer are all cited as outcomes of being obese.
But there’s another public health crisis involving obesity that no one’s really talking about.
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Obesity makes surgical recovery harder and riskier
What happens when an obese person becomes one of the 15 million Americans each year who undergo some sort of surgery?
According to one researcher, obesity and surgery are a bad combination, and should also be considered a public health issue.
Using data drawn from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, Dr. Robert Meguid, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Colorado and his co-researchers studied data from more than 5.5 million patients, 44.6 percent of whom had obesity.
They focused on nine surgical specialties, including general, thoracic and vascular, and compared pre-operative characteristics and postoperative outcomes with various degrees of body mass index (BMI).
Compared to patients of normal weight, patients who were overweight or obese had a higher risk of developing infection, kidney failure, and blood clots in the veins following surgery.
Patients with the highest BMI also had a higher risk of being readmitted to the hospital for complications following surgery.
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Another good reason to aim for a healthy weight
“We need to continue to recognize that overweight and obesity can have medical impacts that aren’t limited to heart disease and diabetes and liver failure,” Dr. Meguid says.
“They can also make recovery from surgery harder, and these data can inform the conversation happening at a broader public health level addressing obesity.”
Why are we presenting this research here?
Simply to provide you with yet another good reason to keep your weight at a healthy level.
No one thinks they’ll need surgery, but it could happen to anyone.
You could find yourself under the knife if your appendix bursts, you have a car accident or need to correct a problem causing back pain.
No one plans on these things happening, but they do, and keeping your weight healthy is one way to increase the chances that you’ll come through surgery safely and in good health.
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Sources:
Obesity associated with increased risk of complications after surgery — Eureka Alert
Public Health Considerations Regarding Obesity — National Library of Medicine
National Surgical Quality Improvement Program — American College of Surgeons
By Joyce Hollman
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