Children as young as 11 should be considered for weight loss surgery because “conservative” diet and exercise interventions don’t work for the severely obese, Australian physicians have been told. Brisbane-based surgeon Dr George Hopkins says desperate parents are screaming out for the surgical intervention yet the Australian hospital system is “un-equipped” to meet their need. Speaking at the Australian New Zealand College of Anaesthetist’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Brisbane, he implored his colleagues to start a conversation on the ‘controversial’ issue. “It’s been discussed intermittingly in small groups but we need more than that for hospitals to start saying ‘lets set this up’. “Logistically our health system as it stands can’t deal with this,” he said. One in four Australian children aged 2-17 are now either overweight or obese. Dr Hopkins has been performing effective sleeve gastrectomies on adolescents for years and says his patients just keep getting younger. One was an 11-year-old boy who weighed about 135 kilograms and refused to go to school because the playground became too difficult for him psychologically. “It was not worth it, he could learn nothing in the environment that had been created,” Dr Hopkins told the meeting. “It was literally gut-wrenching.” “The need out there is just screaming, it’s just a question of getting everybody on board,” he told AAP. “These parents are often desperate. If someone is dragging their kid along to see me because they care, they’re prepared to go through all the steps to do it. It’s not child…more detail
