The enormous economic costs of America's obesity epidemic

America’s obesity epidemic is fueling a boom in expensive weight-loss surgery, extra-wide hospital beds, and supersize grave plots

Bariatric weight-loss surgeries can cost as much as $25,000.
(Image credit: M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

In an operating room at Baptist Memphis Hospital, surgeon George Woodman stood over a sedated patient, preparing to insert a 5-inch needle into her huge abdomen, draped with yards of blue surgical cloth. The 30-year-old patient weighed 330 pounds, with a body mass index of 46 — so heavy she's considered "morbidly" obese. Woodman made five small incisions and slowly inserted the instruments he would use to remove most of her stomach. As he and his team worked, the patient's organs — stomach, spleen, pancreas, liver, pulsing heart — could be seen on a video monitor. Two gaping hernias became visible, holes torn in the abdominal sac that holds the body's major organs. "The belly wall is not designed to hold this much weight," Woodman observed. He pointed out the many tiny blood vessels in the stomach lining. "The stomach has a lot of blood supply. That's why it's so good at absorbing terrible foods," he said.

By the operation's end, most of the patient's stomach was trimmed away, leaving a much smaller "gastric sleeve" that would allow her to feel full after eating only small amounts of food. Removing a portion of the stomach also suppresses the hormones that stimulate hunger. The operation (known as a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy) is now the most common type of weight-loss surgery performed in the U.S.

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