Taffy Makaya, Rebecca Poole and Kavitha Rozario
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data - hypoferritinemia was found in 57% (95% CI, 50 to 65) of the cohort
participants, and 13% (95% CI, 9 to 18) had undergone one or more additional
intra-abdominal procedures. This data re-emphasizes the fact that on-going
longterm data is essential for evaluating eventual health and well-being in
children and adolescents who undergo bariatric surgery.
Bariatric Surgery in Children and Adolescents in the UK
There is limited experience with bariatric surgery in the UK. As quoted
earlier the NBSR 2014 report [97] was the first in-depth description of
bariatric surgery in patients aged less than 25 years of age in the UK: n=570.
There were 62 patients aged ≤18 years who underwent bariatric surgery during
the three-year period 20 11 - 2013 (Figure 6) Unfortunately further analysis
including primary operations for female patients: Initial BMI and age; and
primary operations for male patients: Initial BMI and age was made for the
age group <25 years without isolating the <18 age group. This is clearly one
short-coming in this report, which will hopefully be addressed in future
editions of the report.
Figure 6. Bariatric surgery in UK children, 2011-2013. Courtesy of NBSR 2014 report,
http://nbsr.co.uk/2014-report/.
As discussed above, there are clear guidelines which recommend when
children should be considered for bariatric surgery [111]. However it is
generally noted that there is chronic under-referral of to the bariatric services
[129]. In 2009 around 1 million people met NICE criteria for bariatric surgery
with around 240,000 wanting surgery, yet only 4300 operations were
performed 2009 [130], see Figure 7, below.