LONDON: Controversial surgery for treating obesity that involves reducing the patient’s stomach to the size of a thumb should be more widely available within the UK’s health service (NHS), according to researchers. They say a lack of resources and prejudice from some doctors is preventing many morbidly obese patients from receiving life-saving surgery.

Dr Carel Le Roux at Imperial College London and his colleague Dr Rachel Batterham are calling for 10 times the number of operations currently performed. At present around 6,000 people receive the surgery each year but guidelines from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, which in the UK determines when surgery is appropriate, say the number should be 60,000.

Currently only patients with a BMI of 35 or over are eligible, but the scientists say more research is needed to work out whether this criterion should be extended. A BMI of 25 or higher is considered overweight. Thirty or more is considered obese. “We are shooting way low at the moment,” said Le Roux. “We actually don’t have the infrastructure to look after these patients.”

Gastric bypass surgery involves closing off part of the stomach and re-plumbing the new smaller stomach into a point further down the small intestine. Traditionally, this was seen as a crude way to reduce the ability of the gut to absorb energy from food. “Physicians had thought this was bad news for a long time,” said Le Roux. Some doctors have also been critical of what has been seen as “lifestyle surgery.”But Le Roux said more recent research has found the surgery leads to subtle changes in hormone levels that determine how hungry the patient feels. In many cases it also cures type two diabetes.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service