Obese patients lower surgery success rates

OBESE patients are undermining operation success rates for surgeons, a top medic warned today.

John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, revealed doctors are handling more "high risk" cases as a direct result of Britain's "fat" epidemic. This means there is a greater chance of a hugely overweight patient dying even during routine treatments, he said.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, the medical expert revealed some doctors are resorting to extreme measures, such as using two operating tables.

He said: "Operations are much more difficult to do on a fat patient. It's definitely dangerous being fat. It [obesity] distorts the whole overall picture, and life expectancy is lower.

"It brings down good performance rates because you have an increasing number of patients you're operating on who are obese. It [surgery] is harder to do, the outcomes are worse and the risks are higher. Sometimes not operating is less risky than operating. It goes with the number of seriously fat people in the population."

Hospitals are now obliged to publish their surgery death rates for patients under new government guidelines. These include hip and knee operations as well as major blood vessel surgery.

Ministers hope this will drive up performance at individual hospital units.

But Mr Black said surgeons were dealing with increasing numbers of hugely overweight people which increased death risks.

Coroners are now in some cases registering cause of death as "morbid obesity" where excessively overweight people have died after operations.

Mr Black said: "Being a bit overweight, having a spare tyre or a few pounds over, is irrelevant.

"But once you get seriously obese, then life expectancy is reduced. You become a high risk for all manner of surgery, both for general complications such as chest infections, and blood clots in the legs and lungs. It's particularly a problem with abdominal surgery."

This comes as experts meet tomorrow in London to discuss new ways of preventing and treating obesity. A Royal College of Nursing conference will highlight issues including healthy food labelling and exercise programmes targeted at problem families.

Today, the Government also launched a nationwide survey of children's health in a bid to improve lifestyles.

But Mr Black said more surgeons were also needed who are trained to carry out weight-loss surgery in cases where patients are morbidly obese.

He said: "It's cost effective [obesity surgery]. Have we got enough obesity surgeons? No. It's a new field. Training people to do this surgery is not easy."