人生の軌跡を綴っていきます


by yu-fen-sun
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Expectations rise for surgery to stem obesity

Expectations for obesity surgery are rising in Japan, where about 600,000 people are reported to be morbidly (病的に) overweight.

Severely overweight people account for 0.5 percent of the country's population in terms of the body mass index, a measure of body fat calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared.

A BMI score of 35 or more is considered morbidly obese.

Treating obesity can involve gastric bypass surgery, in which the stomach is divided to restrict food intake.

According to medical experts, the annual number of surgical procedures to treat obesity is around 340,000 in the rest of the world.

The number in Japan is only about 100, but it is gradually increasing.

In anticipation of a future rise in the number of operations, the Japanese Society for Treatment of Obesity announced guidelines at a meeting in Tokyo in July, designating people with a BMI score of 35 or more and those suffering complications (合併症) from illness with a score of 32 or more as requiring treatment.

Japan is believed to lag behind (遅れを取る、大きく水をあけられる) other advanced countries in terms of surgical procedures for morbidly obese people, with about 300 carried out up to fiscal 2006, according to a survey compiled by Iwao Sasaki, a professor at Tohoku University who specializes in surgery and a former president of the society.

However, an additional 205 surgical procedures were performed at eight medical facilities in the last two years.

Isao Kawamura conducted the first surgical procedure on a severely overweight person in Japan at Chiba University in 1982.

Kawamura, honorary director of Kamagaya General Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, said such operations are necessary because the number of severely overweight people is increasing.

"Obesity is hard to cure," said Yasushi Saito, director of the society and president of Chiba University.

"Even those who manage to reduce their weight fail to keep it off."

He called for practitioners in the fields of medicine, surgery and psychiatry (精神科), as well as nutritionists and nurses, to cooperate on treating obese people for sustained (息の長い) periods.

Severe weight is a serious issue in the United States, where about 400,000 people reportedly die of obesity each year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity is the second-biggest cause of preventable (予防可能な) deaths in the country after smoking.

Surgical procedures for obesity became possible in the mid-1990s with the introduction of the laparoscope (腹腔鏡) to examine the abdomen.

Such procedures have become commonplace in the U.S. and Canada, which are said to account for two-thirds of all such operations in the world.

Former sumo champion Konishiki underwent surgery in Hawaii in February 2008 and succeeded in losing more than 120 kg.

The former grappler (力士), who weighed 303 kg at one time, said his life has changed following the operation.

The recorded death rate among people who have undergone surgery is much lower in the seven years following an operation compared with those who have not received surgery, according to a followup survey conducted in the United States and European countries.

The Japanese Society for Treatment of Obesity is expected to start registering surgical procedures for the treatment of obesity and to make the figures public before the end of the year.

肥満は万病の元ですね。
日々のちょっとした気遣いで肥満って回避できますよね。
生活習慣の改善が一番の治療法だと思います。
by yu-fen-sun | 2009-09-09 00:44 | 英語関連