Panel suggests 100 ways to improve weight-loss surgery
August5, 2004
By Jennifer Fenn
BOSTON -- An expert panel on weight-loss surgery issued a report Wednesday outlining 100 recommendations designed to improve the safety of patients who choose the increasingly popular procedure.
In light of a significant increase in the number of weight-loss procedures during the past eight years, Department of Public Health Commissioner Christine Ferguson asked the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and Medical Error Reduction in February to convene a group of medical professionals to study the issue.
Ferguson said the creation of the panel coincided with heavily publicized deaths resulting from the surgery but stressed the driving force was the high volume of surgeries now taking place. More than 2,700 gastric bypass operations were conducted in 2003 compared with fewer than 150 in 1996.
The panel created nine task forces that included representatives from 80 percent of the sites performing weight-loss surgeries in the state, said Dr. Alan Harvey, the chairman of panel. That means those experts have signed off on the report and support the recommendations, said Harvey, a doctor at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Three doctors from Berkshire Medical Center served on task forces including Mark Pettus, Robert Fanelli and Robert Cella.
Recommendations include more patient education and informed consent, data collection, strict criteria for patient selection and eligibility, comparisons of the safety of the various surgical procedures, and credentialing of facilities and surgeons.
Nancy Ridley, director of the Lehman Patient Safety Center, said the next step is to get the information in the hands of doctors, professional societies, hospitals, consumers and the public. She said she'd like to see the best practices, including all 100-plus recommendations, adopted as broadly as possible.
"It's going to take everybody to package these tools and recommendations and put them out there are being the only practice we want to see to ensure a safe patient experience," Ridley said.
But not only does Ridley hope the information leads to better practices throughout hospitals, she said it should help patients make more educated decisions. She said the panel also wanted to create a series of "patient tools, a patient primer" that will help those considering the high-risk surgery.
Health experts said patients should only have the surgery
if the potential of serious illnesses related to obesity
outweighs the risk of the surgery. Complications can
occur as a result of surgery, including death. There
is a 1 percent chance of death associated with the gastric
bypass surgery, or stomach stapling. There is a 0.5
percent chance of death associated with the less invasive
gastric band procedure, which calls for the surgeon
to place an adjustable band around the upper portion
of the stomach, shrinking its size.
Helen Flaherty, 41, of Quincy, had the gastric bypass surgery in December and has lost 97 pounds. Flaherty is pleased with the panel's findings because she thinks it will not only lead to safer practices, but help patients navigate through the heaps of information.
"It brings together a lot of information that was scattered," she said. "It's a tough decision to make and the more somebody knows about it the better and this report will make it easier for them to do that."
Source: www.sentinelandenterprise.com
|
