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Gastric Bypass Guide
Bariatric Surgery Is Growing At A Phenomenal Rate
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services) released a report at the start of 2007 which covers the period 1998 to 2004 and shows a staggering increase in the number of bariatric surgeries being performed in the United States. Surprisingly, the report also reveals that fact that the actual cost of gastric bypass surgery in real terms (adjusted for inflation) fell slightly over this same period.
The report is quite detailed but here are its main findings:
- The total number of bariatric surgeries (which include all forms of weight loss surgery including gastric bypass surgery, vertical gastrectomy, lap band surgery and others) rose nine fold from 13,386 operation in 1998 to 121,055 procedures in 2004.
- The fastest growth in bariatric surgery was seen in the 55 to 64 age group where surgeries increased more than twenty times from 772 to nearly 16,000.
- There were significantly more surgeries carried out on women than men, with women accounting for 82% of all surgeries.
- Gastric bypass surgery (the reduction of the stomach and bypassing of part of the intestine to reduce food absorption) remained the most popular form of bariatric surgery accounting for 94% of all surgeries.
- The inpatient death rate from bariatric surgery fell from 0.89% to 0.19% with deaths down to 230 patients in 2004. It was also noted that while the death rate in men was higher than that in women this ratio also fell significantly during the period. In 1998 the death rate amongst men was 6 times that of women and this figure had fallen to 2.8 by 2004.
- Bariatric surgery is now being seen increasingly as a solution to obesity in adolescents (12 to 17 years of age) and while no accurate statistics were available for 1998, a total of 349 surgeries were performed in 2004.
- The total costs for inpatient care in support of bariatric surgery rose from $147 million in 1998 to $1.3 billion dollars in 2004. At the same time however the inflation adjusted cost for inpatient care for bariatric surgery fell by more than 5% from $10,970 to $10,395. These figures do not include physician fees.
- The majority of surgeries (78.4%) were paid for by private insurance. Medicare, Medicaid and other payers, including government sources and charities, accounted for about 16% and only 5% of surgeries were uninsured.
Although many may find these figures surprising (not least the fact that the cost of gastric bypass surgery has fallen and is being predominantly met by private insurance), the epidemic nature of obesity in much of the western world and the introduction of new procedures, such as laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding and robotic gastric bypass surgery, is likely to produce further startling statistics in the next few years.
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