Doctors at San Fernando General Hospital have started a life saving, weight loss surgery which could potentially "cure" diabetes within a week in morbidly obese patients. So said San Fernando doctor Dilip Dan in an interview after the hospital became the first public health institution to perform Bariatric surgery (Gastric bypass) surgery last week.
Dan said the surgery could potentially reverse complications associated with obesity including diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. "In general we look at this (surgery) as the potential cure for diabetes especially in anybody who is overweight or obese, not just morbidly obese. It is a cure for diabetes in the vast majority of patients who undergo it. It is a cure with a week of surgery generally," he said.
Three South women, weighing between 240 pound to 300 pounds, were the first patients to benefit from the surgery, a collaboration between doctors from the South West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) and doctors from the American College of Surgery. Dan said the surgery was part of Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan's Fight the Fat campaign.
Dan, who performed the surgery, said for the past ten years, Gastric bypass had been performed at private hospitals. Now morbidly obese patients who cannot afford the surgery could access the service at the hospital. However, he said, doctors will be looking at certain criteria before patients can undergo the surgery.
One of the criterion, he said, will be the patient's medical history. "It is really to get the patient back on track and to give them back eight to ten years of their life they would have lost with all the complications they would have had," he said. Dan said the surgery was strictly for medical purposes. "This is not cosmetic, this is purely health related to get a patient back from a bad health situation into a more healthy lifestyle," he said.