The number of Americans seeking to reduce their weight through bariatric surgery more than quadrupled between 1998 and 2002—from 13 386 to 71 733—according to a new study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (Encinosa et al. Health Aff [Millwood]. 2005;24:1039-1046).
The authors said that surgeries were performed on 0.6% of the 11.5 million adults eligible in 2002. Hospital costs for the surgery grew 6-fold to $948 million in that year. As the number of medically eligible candidates (those with a body mass index greater than 40) is likely to increase and safety concerns of the procedure diminish, the authors predict that the future demand for weight-loss surgery will rise.
The study’s findings were based on data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, the largest all-payer inpatient care database in the United States, and the Medstat 2002 MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounter Database, which contains medical claims for . . . [Full Text of this Article]
