Today, health experts revealed that the world is facing a childhood and adolescent obesity crisis. Thus, a weight loss surgery option is currently deemed important.
Based on statistics, one out of five children has been classified as obese and more than 2,000 overweight young people needed hospital treatment for obesity between 2012 and 2016. And most of these obese patients can't lose weight alone, King's College Hospital pediatric surgeon Ashish Desai revealed.
Fortunately, childhood obesity specialists consider weight loss surgery such gastric bypass as the best option to solve the current obesity crisis among children. According to Daily Mail, bariatric surgery (gastric band) is much better and cheaper compared to the treatment of chronic effects caused by obesity, including type 2 diabetes, asthma and hypertension.
So, are parents to be blamed for the rising cases of obesity worldwide? The answer is no. In fact, parents from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are not to blame because they are often working long hours and can't always monitor what their children are eating.
There is one interesting culprit, however, and its junk food. Experts said that junk foods are a lot cheaper than those healthy foods.
"Yes they should fill their fridges and ladders with healthy food, but realistically if a bag of salad costs $2.12 (£1.49), and a parent on a low income can get two filling pizzas for the same price, it is not difficult to see why they choose the pizzas," Dr. Desai said.
While some experts are pushing for weight loss surgery as a solution to the growing obesity crisis, Professor Andre Prentice of the Energy Regulation and Obesity Group at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, U.K. stressed that bariatric surgery cannot solve the current obesity crisis.
Prentice said that children should be given diet and exercise tips instead of urging them to undergo weight loss surgery.
"Obesity generally takes years to develop and hence is usually a disease of the middle-aged," Prentice explained. Children do, of course, become obese, but any child with severe obesity should first be investigated for an underlying genetic, medical or psychological cause. Sometimes these can be corrected with great efficacy."
"Failing this the next steps would be to investigate and modify the family environment," he added. "Surgical intervention should always be a last resort and should probably be restricted to children with severe genetic or chromosomal disorders that induce uncontrollable hyperphagia [an abnormally great desire for food]."
Meanwhile, weight loss surgery has been considered beneficial to the teens in the United States. According to the latest study, the teens who underwent bariatric surgery experienced major improvement in weight, cardiovascular comorbidities and weight-related quality of life three years after their procedures, Medscape reported.
