Obesity surgery rates growing

Information released by the NHS Information Centre has found that the amount of obesity surgery being paid for by the NHS had risen by 785 per cent in the last five years.

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said: "These figures just show how bad things have got with the obesity epidemic.

"We have alternative ways of losing weight but when people realise this is a possibility, they could go for it. Worse still, there is a premise that if you feed yourself up you get to the bar - 35 BMI with co-morbidities or 40 without - then the operation would be yours.

"These operations cost money and the PCTs are trying to raise the bar of who's eligible. There's something in the order of 500,000 people who might be eligible for surgery.

However Peter Sedman, bariatric surgeon a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons, has said that the rise may be simply down to the fact the NHS is now clearing a backlog of cases which needed attention.

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