Should patients with class I obesity Have weight-loss surgery done?

Weight-loss surgery improves or puts into remission type 2 diabetes, reduces heart attacks and stroke and results in significant and durable weight loss, but a new study finds outdated guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) more than 30 years ago may be stopping a large portion of patients with a lower body mass index (BMI), who could otherwise benefit, from having the surgery or even considering it an option.

In the retrospective study presented at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Annual Meeting, researchers found little more than 8,100 weight-loss procedures, either laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy or laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, were performed on patients with class I obesity.

Researchers theorized that surgery only should be offered to those with a BMI of 35 kg/m2 or more, rather than newer and recent guidelines, that lower the BMI cut-off to 30 for patients with an obesity-related disease such as type 2 diabetes.

Hence, they added that the National Institutes of Health Guidelines from 1991 are outdated and its recommendations do not reflect decades of data regarding the safety and effectiveness of metabolic and bariatric surgery. Nor does it take into consideration the development of laparoscopic procedures that make the surgery less invasive and safer.