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Loss of life not acceptable result of weight-loss surgery

Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update, January 18, 2005

With more and more people turning to weight-loss surgery as the answer for obesity, health officials are warning hospitals that they must take better precautions to keep the death rate from complications to a minimum.

Following 16 surgery-related deaths reported to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine over 18 months dating from March 2003 to October 2004, the Board's Patient Care Assessment (PCA) Committee issued the warning, according to the Boston Globe.

The warning stated that although the risk of death is quite low, better guidelines for patient care after surgery and more effective training to detect signs of dangerous complications such as blood clots and infections could have prevented some of the deaths. Complications were more common at hospitals with less experience performing the surgery and less-formal patient care guidelines, according to Martin Crane, chairman of the Board of Registration in Medicine.

'These people are much more vulnerable to complications, and we have to pay attention to that," Crane told the Boston Globe. 'We found some institutions weren't doing a reasonable amount of cases to have the appropriate level of services."

To read the PCA's update on postoperative management of weight-loss surgery patients, click here (Adobe Acrobat required).

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