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• Posted November 1, 2024

Weight-Loss Surgery for Teens Brings Lasting Benefit

Hillary Fisher thinks receiving weight-loss surgery as a teenager put her on the path to a better life.

Fisher is one of 260 teens who participated in a long-term study which recently concluded that weight-loss surgery can bring lasting health benefits for obese teenagers.

“It changed my life,” Fisher, now 31, said in a news release. “The improved health and self-esteem that came with the 100-pound weight loss were important to me and I would certainly do it again.”

Fisher was not alone in her success: The surgery led to substantial and sustained weight loss for more than half of the study’s participants during a decade of follow-up, researchers reported Oct. 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The teens also had fewer obesity-related health problems in adulthood like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, researchers report.

“Our study presents impressive outcomes of the longest follow-up of weight-loss surgery during adolescence, which validates bariatric surgery as a safe and effective long-term obesity management strategy,” said lead investigator Justin Ryder, vice chair of research for the Department of Surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

Fisher decided to undergo the surgery at age 16.

“I was crushed by the daily issues I faced due to my weight, health problems and bullying in high school,” Fisher said. “After many unsuccessful attempts to lose weight, at 260 pounds, we decided bariatric surgery was the answer.”

After 10 years, the teens treated with weight-loss surgery still had an average 20% reduction in their BMI, researchers report.

They also had better markers of heart health, with an average 57% reduction in high blood pressure and 54% reduction of elevated cholesterol levels.

Most impressively, about 55% of the teens who had type 2 diabetes were still in remission a decade after their weight-loss surgery, researchers found.

By comparison, recent clinical trials have found that about 12% to 18% of adults who get bariatric surgery can expect to have their type 2 diabetes go into lasting remission, the researchers noted.

“This is considerably better than the outcomes reported in people who underwent bariatric surgery as adults, a major reason why treating obesity seriously in adolescents is so important,” Ryder said in a hospital news release.

Type 2 diabetes tends to progress more rapidly in young people, researchers noted, so it makes sense that weight-loss surgery would provide more benefit to teens than adults.

“The fascinating part is that when we use these operations in teenagers, the remission of health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure are more durable than when operations are done later in adulthood,” said senior researcher Dr. Thomas Inge, surgeon-in-chief at Lurie Children’s.

Researchers found that both major types of weight-loss surgery, gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy, had similar results.

These findings show that weight-loss surgery is under-utilized in teenagers, the researchers concluded.

Nearly 5 million teenagers are eligible for weight-loss surgery, but only 1 of every 2,500 teens with severe obesity receive the procedure, researchers said.

More information

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital has more on surgical weight loss for teens.

SOURCE: Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, news release, Oct. 30, 2024; National Institutes of Health, news release, Oct. 30, 2024