Obesity :: High rate of overweight and obesity found in children having surgery

A very high proportion of children who are having surgery are overweight or obese, and because of the excess weight have a greater chance of experiencing problems associated with the surgery, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Health System.

Researchers looked at a database of all 6,017 pediatric surgeries at the U-M Hospital from 2000 to 2004, and they found that nearly a third of the patients ? 31.5 percent ? were overweight or obese. More than half of those children qualified as obese, according to the study, which appears in the new issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association.

The prevalence of overweight children having surgery presents challenges to surgeons, anesthesiologists and their teams. Overweight adult patients are more likely to have conditions such as type II diabetes, hypertension, asthma and other breathing problems, and are more likely to develop infections in their wounds after surgery. The researchers on this study say those conditions also are becoming common among overweight and obese children.

The results also suggest that children who are overweight or obese have an increased likelihood of requiring certain types of surgery. The surgeries these children were having performed most frequently included the removal of tonsils and adenoids, as well as other surgeries designed to assist with breathing problems and sleep apnea; orthopedic surgeries to fix broken bones and other ailments; and procedures designed to mend digestive and gastrointestinal issues.

?The high rates of overweight and obesity that we found among children are striking because overweight children have a higher risk of problems before, during and after surgery,? says lead author Bukky Nafiu, M.D., FRCA, a resident in the U-M Medical School Department of Anesthesiology.


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