Childhood obesity is on the rise in the majority of Western countries: and so pediatricians are proposing not lifestyle changes, not other preventive measures such as eliminating the machines that distribute potato chips and sweets from schools, but the simplest way. That of bariatric surgery.

If until ten years ago this seemed impossible, today pediatric bariatric surgery is instead one of the solutions that doctors are considering to combat childhood obesity.

PEDIATRIC BARIATRIC SURGERY
THE DECLARATION OF THE AAP, AMERICAN PEDIATRIC ASSOCIATION

In the United States alone, according to the American Pediatric Association, there are 4 and a half million obese children. So much so that he signed an official document asking for greater access to bariatric surgery, lowering the minimum age for this procedure.

The reason? Bariatric surgery, therefore the surgical reduction of the bowel, is currently the strategy that works best for treating obesity. And as we are seeing an epidemic of younger and younger obese, it’s only fitting that children get the same treatment too.

Pediatrician Sarah Armstrong, a member of the AAP commission and author of a study analyzing the life expectancy of those severely obese children , proposes the document .
Saving their lives is possible if the surgery is done.
Also in the study, she specifies that the term “pediatric bariatric surgery” means surgery for all patients under the age of 18. And therefore not so much young children as obese adolescents are the patients whose life can be saved by surgery.
Complications affect 15% (depending on the type of treatment) of patients undergoing bariatric surgery: this means that it is safe, she explains.