The Covid-19 pandemic caused an overload of the health system and led to the cancellation of surgical treatment against obesity for many Brazilians. According to data from the Brazilian Society of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery (SBCBM), the number of procedures fell from 12,568 in 2019 to 3,772 in 2020 – a drop of 69.9%.
To give you an idea, between 2011 and 2018, about 420,000 people had the procedure. The data for 2021 has not yet been closed and 2022 begins with the advancement of Ômicron, which should also impact procedures.
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Suspended since the beginning of the pandemic because they are considered elective surgeries, bariatric surgery was reclassified as an essential elective procedure by the Ministry of Health and should be prioritized in public health and supplementary with the resumption of procedures.
The federal agency recognizes that the delay in the treatment of obesity can result in increased morbidity and mortality and considers that it is necessary to accelerate the process, as the delay will result in greater harm to patients and greater cost and burden, in the medium term, for the health system. .
What few know is that, after bariatric surgery, for health reasons and physical-emotional factors, people end up facing a new challenge. The accentuated weight loss after this surgery ends up generating excess skin, which causes dermatitis and diaper rash, loss of muscles, excessive sagging and even a psychological framework of great vulnerability. Part of the treatment against obesity, reconstructive surgery becomes necessary for most cases, a continuity of treatment.
If before the pandemic almost 100% of patients could not access the procedure through health plans, with the pandemic the difficulty was intensified.
Lawyer Columbano Feijó, a partner at Falcon, Gail, Feijó e Sluiuzas Advogados and specializing in health law, reinforces that reconstructive surgery is a matter of health and not aesthetics, as some health plans want to say. “Denying the continuation of post-bariatric treatment is something that borders on inhumane, since it puts people’s physical and mental health at real risk”, says Feijó, who counts with more than 3 thousand active processes in favor of people who go through this difficulty.
It happens that when they are going to request a reconstructive surgery in their medical plan, there are usually two answers: they do not authorize the procedure, justifying that there is no coverage. And another answer is that when they approve the procedure, they only allow the correction to be made in the abdominal part, which is not enough in the vast majority of cases.
“People need to have their rights guaranteed. Weight loss occurs in a generalized way and in addition to the abdomen it also occurs, for example, in the arms and legs. One way to solve this, on the part of health plans, would be to link bariatric surgery to repair surgery, after a few months or years and according to the weight lost. It would cause less suffering to people”, adds the lawyer.
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