Weight loss surgery is often a last resort that helps patients lose a large amount of weight when all other options have failed.

For children who are morbidly obese, weight-loss surgery is not an easy option.

weightloss

According to Mr. Ashish Desai, a pediatric surgeon from King’s College Hospital in London who specializes in weight loss surgery, it is only considered when nothing else will work.

“Surgery is not a short cut or a solution by itself,” he says.

“The patient must be seen every month in the year after surgery and must follow a strict diet and do all the prescribed exercises.

“If we feel like the patient may not be able to do the follow-up sessions or is not committed enough, we would not do the surgery.”

The hospital is the first specialist surgical center for pediatric obesity in the UK, and since it opened Mr. Desai has operated on four patients, all aged 15-17.

Comfort eating

One of these patients is Jayne, not her real name, from Kent, in South East England. She weighed 23 stones (322 pounds/146 kg) at the time of her operation, which took place just before her 17th birthday, and she had a body mass index (BMI) of 45.

 

“I am 18 next year and I want to have a big party to show everyone the new, confident me.” Jayne

 

Although she committed to exercising and eating healthy food, Jayne could not lose weight.

“There were little things in my life that mounted up and I used food as my comfort. I tried loads of diets but my weight was my brick wall.”

Read Weight Loss Surgery for Children Saves Lives Part 2 for more on this story.