“Obesity is a chronic, progressive and relapsing disease against which fortunately today we do not have a single treatment strategy. There are exercise, diets, cognitive behavioral treatment and some drugs, but to date surgery is certainly the tool which guarantees the best result in terms of weight loss and allows this weight loss to be long-lasting.” Thus the president of the Italian Society of Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Diseases, Giuseppe Navarra, on the occasion of the 32nd Sicob National Congress entitled ‘Obesity: in search of a new therapeutic alliance’, underway at Giardini Naxos (Messina) .
In Italy, bariatric surgery operations “are increasing”, recalls Navarra: “We have gradually gone from 9-10 thousand in 2014 to over 26 thousand in 2023”. Not only that, “almost 98% of the operations – underlines President Sicob – are conducted with minimally invasive techniques, i.e. laparoscopically or robotically through 3 or 4 small incisions of 5, 10 or at most 15 millimetres. In fact, the bariatric surgery has become gentle and the hospital stay has been reduced: the patient suffers reduced trauma during hospitalization and with pre-operative, intra-operative and post-operative management protocols he can return home in absolute safety even after just 48 hours” .
Obviously “some requirements must be obeyed: among these, the patient must not have a fever – explains Navarra – the white blood cells and heart rate must be within the normal range. Only in these conditions can one be discharged as he is able to face life outside the hospital independently”. Another “fundamental element, the patient must be able to contact the facility at any time of the day or night. The important thing is to remember that surgery is not, by definition, miraculous because there may be complications, but with a very low percentage, just as the mortality rate is close to zero.”
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