Partly Cloudy / 36° F
A couple of days ago the rural route mail delivery to my home included a large card with pictures of smiling women.
Bill Bradford: Hazardous junk mail with a $25,000 price tag
Published 10:42am Thursday, November 5, 2009The card had been printed and mailed at the expense of a large health care system one county removed from my residence in Cass.
It purported to offer a remedy for a very real medical problem that is widespread among us – excess body weight and obesity.
Since about two-thirds of us have this problem, the message of the card was targeted to a very large, susceptible number of potential customers.
The card offered an upbeat invitation to attend a series of seminars on body weight loss.
The featured physician at the seminars was named and then his qualifications noted as “one of Michigan’s most experienced bariatric surgeons.”
If you received one of these cards, I hope you promptly threw it away.
Bariatric surgery may put a band around the esophagus or it may decrease the usable size of your stomach by so-called stapling.
The immediate post-surgical hazards include pneumonia and clot formation in the leg veins.
The stapling may allow stomach acids to leak into the abdomen.
Five percent of those having the surgery will experience infections of the incision.
Five percent of bariatric surgery patients develop stomach ulcers.
Fifteen percent experience hernia or weakness at the incision site.
These patients are instructed to eat six small meals a day.
Dehydration is not uncommon because only small amounts of water may be drunk at any one time.
If too large a quantity of food is eaten or food of the wrong type, there may be vomiting or diarrhea.
Poor absorption of nutrients may result in iron deficiency anemia or neurological problems. The neurological problems may result from poor absorption of vitamin B12.
Bone disease may develop from poor absorption of calcium and vitamin D. Kidney stones may result from absorption changes of calcium and vitamin D.
f the bariatric surgery results in persistent low blood sugar, another surgery may be needed to remove a part of your pancreas.
When I phoned the information number on the card and asked about bariatric surgery complications, only vomiting and diarrhea were mentioned, and those were the result of the patient not following instructions. The other information about complications comes from the Mayo Clinic Web site.
Hospital and surgical fees for bariatric surgery are $25,000.
These surgeries may be a wonderful way to help that hospital system improve its cash flow. They may also help guarantee a good standard of living for the surgeon.
I hope these benefits to others are not built on miseries for you and increased hazards to your life or your well-being.
There are much better treatment options available to correct overweight challenges.
Bill Bradford retired to the rigors of a small farm in Pokagon Township.
He has served as director of clinical laboratories in physician group practices and hospitals.
For a decade he was an educator in clinical laboratory sciences at Andrews University.
