bariatric surgery

Bariatric Surgery

With bariatric or obesity surgery obese or morbidly obese patients can reduce their overweight tremendously with many methods like gastric band, vertical gastrectomy, Roux en Y gastric bypass but other methods like gastric balloon or new endoscopic methods like TOGA or VBLOC to help reduce weight are introduced. With all other methods like diets, diet and slim clubs, medications etc. a lot of companies have made a lot of money but nothing else besides medical surgical treatments seems to work. Bariatric surgery started almost 20 years especially when the laparoscopic surgery to remove the galbladder was introduced is went sky high. Worldwide the bariatric surgeons are assembled in the world organization IFSO with more than 400,000 surgeries/year know that at this moment surgery is helping for many thousands of people but it doesn’t effect obesity at all.

Take USA as example

USA is perfect example for bariatric surgery, 1/3 of total population is obese; this 100 million and this number is unfortunately stark raising. In 2007 the number of surgeries was around 200,000. This means 0,2% of total obese population. For 2008 the american surgeons expect to do around 300,000 surgeries. Although the american surgeons are making the highest numbers worldwide it is a drop in a bucket. The majority of the Americans are absolute behind surgery but facing a lot of problems:

- Financially most insurance companies are still not funding for the surgery although the results for the last 15 years of bariatric surgery are so clear and they save within 5 years after surgery all major expenses in medication, hospital treatments, visits to physicians etc.

- When patients are turned down for financial investments of the insurance companies they are indicated to pay private for surgery. The prices surgeons in USA have to ask due to high insurances, strict policies to regulations/protocols and other issues makes those prices the highest worldwide, with second place for the United Kingdom.

For patients there are alternatives in countries like Mexico, Brasil, Argentina and Europe but most patients get lost in the jungle of medical tourism, providers make high profits and if patients go direct to the surgeon it is unclear is this surgeon has good qualification. Besides that most surgeons in USA don’t want to give after care to this patient.

It seems that without solving these problems the end of obesity is far far away. What could be a solution?

Medical outsourcing

With medical outsourcing the US-surgeon offers the cheaper option but stays in control the whole time. The patient will be her/his for the rest of the treatment. The screening for surgery – coordination with outsourcing surgeon and after care is in the hands of the US-surgeon.

Outsourcing to high qualification centres in India

Although India has just a handful high trained bariatric surgeons the future to support USA for this matter is there. For instant in our Centre, Obesity Asia (www.obesityasia.com) by dr. Shashank Shah we have 3 excellent methods to offer medical outsourcing to bariatric patients of USA. First method is our guidance and interaction by our bariatric coordinator Jaap Suyk who is with expertise after more 12 years bariatric surgery support and advisory to patients pre-and post-op care and more than 20 years long career in the medical industry one of our spear point. Second method (but actually first method) is our top-surgeon dr. Shashank Shah who has proctored hundreds of surgeons in last years for bariatric surgery and with his high qualification guarantee for the bariatric patient and her/his surgeon to offer the best surgery against very competitive price for every body. Third method is our video conference during surgery what offers the best information to the US-surgeon that her/his patient gets the best treatment.

Medical tourism or medical outsourcing?

Everybody in the field of bariatric surgery knows that the future to get obesity (and also diabetes) really treated only can work with the help of medical outsourcing. Our Centre looks for all kinds of cooperation methods, we started with the Netherlands recently, for medical outsourcing. This doesn’t mean that we will refuse patients who come by their self but outsourcing has definetely our preferences. We believe that India can be the helping hand on the field of treating obesity. And besides these arguments with us in Pune we have developed a special method in which outsourcing and bariatric surgery itself really helps to create extra funding to the poorest people of Pune. It is a start and we will put all our energy into this method. How Obesity can benefit poverty. We hope it will.

International Centre of Excellence bariatric surgery quality of care

How would foreign patients insurance companies and hospitals from USA and Europe know about high or poor quality a hospital from India can offer. This is an interesting question. It is good that systems like accreditation from JCI are there but do they really offer the guarantee you as patient, insurance company or hospital will like to get? 

In bariatric surgery we go some steps further with the US-concept of Centre of Excellence bariatric surgery set up by Surgical Review and American Society of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery. Clear guidelines according to US-laws and regular inspection of surgery and service providing is real guarantee for quality. 

The database of Centre of Excellence bariatric surgery is called BOLD and gives an unique option to share data between hospitals, when they have a tight cooperation together. 

Obesityasia (www.obesityasia.com) is in process to become, hopefully also the first, International Centre of Excellence bariatric surgery in India so we can make strong commitments with US and European hospitals on the field of medical outsourcing to us.