I saw two commercials recently for a national clinic that advocates gastric bypass and other surgical procedures for obesity. I didn’t catch the name or URL (though they showed one), because I was horrified at their content!
Commercial one: Gaunt man stares angrily at camera. “I’m dying of cancer. I’m going to die in agony. My friend Beth was morbidly obese. I have to die. She didn’t.” (cue logo and url for clinic).
Commercial two: Suave doctor talks to camera. "I recently consulted with two sisters who were considering gastric bypass surgery, Sarah and Emily. Emily decided to go with the surgery; Sarah was too afraid to. Since the surgery, Emily has lost 190 lbs. Sarah would have been proud of her. She really would have been. (single tear) (Cue logo and URL)
What the blistering anal-FUCK!? I understand that scaring and emotionally manipulating people is the best way for clinics and pharmaceutical companies to make money, but this is INSANE! This is manipulate emotional rape!
I had gastric bypass surgery with fantastic results. I haven’t seen the commercials you are talking about, but I have to say that these sound terribly bad. Anyone considering gastric bypass surgery needs to get all of the facts directly from their doctor and make careful, informed decisions, not get scared into making a decision “or else” you’ll immediately die of cancer or heart disease or whatever. Geez.
Let’s not exaggerate here. At this hospital there have been over 1000 gastric bypass operations, and only one death. That’s a mortality rate of 0.1%, which is excellent. Yes, even one death is too many, but you make it sound like people are dying left and right.
The obesity surgery that I’m considering - the duodenal switch - has a mortality rate of 1-2%. That’s pretty freaking high. The reason it’s so high, though, is because the surgeons will often take patients who are super-morbidly obese. These people face a terrifying 1 in 3 chance of dying just from the general anesthetic. To them, however, it’s worth it, because they’re looking at a drastic reduction in lifespan from diabetes, high blood pressure, blood clots, cancer, and any number of co-morbidities.
However, the commercials you describe are totally heinous. It’s not like the fat people of the world need more guilt on top of everything else.
The rate of death varies with each doctor, too. Anyone who would decide to have gastric bypass surgery based on a commercial isn’t ready for it. There’s so much research and work involved in getting ready for it. People who are serious about it eventually find out about any negatives.
My surgery was successful, but these commercials give gastric bypass a bad name. There are enough people who think it’s the easy way out and commercials like this don’t help. You don’t see a commercial and immediately go down to your friendly neighborhood doctor for a quick fix. It’s not that simple.
That doesn’t add up for me, either. AFAIK, we don’t do duodenal switches, but a good number of patients came in at over 400 pounds. The largest was 637. (Actually, the largest was 2531, but I suspect that’s a data entry error.) From your claim, one would guess that 333 of these patients died due to anesthesia, whereas only one died, and that was due to a wildly misplaced staple causing the patient to bleed out. (From what I heard through the grapevine – the surgeon himself won’t tell me about it, and I haven’t asked him directly.)
Total guess here, but I suspect the percentage is brought down by the large number of not-super-morbidly obese who are having the procedure done. The “33% mortality rate from the anesthesia alone” statistic probably doesn’t apply to those who are merely obese, just the unfortunates in the top (pulling number out of my ass) 1% or so.
More than half were over 290. Over a third were over 315. And 58 were over 400. (This is out of 843 patients.) The top 1%, 84 patients, were 379.5 and up. The person who was exectly 379.5 is 5’ 11", which would make his BMI 52.9, an entire trim person over what would be considered obese at BMI 30. And he was the thinnest of the top 1%.
I don’t think we can deny that a goodly number from this sample constitues “morbidly obese.” And yet out of the entire sample, only one died, and that was not from anesthesia. So one can claim the 33% mortality rate, but the numbers I have do not bear that out, not in the least.
Of course, maybe in this hospital the anesthetists take far greater care than all of the anesthetists in the rest of the country, but I doubt it.
I’m not saying people who have gastric bypasses are dropping like flies, but it aggravates me that commercials like this act like major surgery is no big deal, as if it has no risks. If it were a drug therapy, they’d be required to list the risks and side effects when they advertised.
The overall death rate for gastric bypass may be 1% or so, but that’s overall.
There are doctors out there who have lost more than 1% of their patients. Some doctors have done 2,000 surgeries and have yet to have a patient die. I think a lot of it depends on skill and experience and also the patients themselves. I imagine the older you are, the bigger you are and the more health problems you have, the more likely you are to die.
Anyone remember this insurance commercial that showed a woman and her two small children mourning at a grave site, with a VO narrator describing all the horrible things she’ll have to do (sell the house, sleep in the car, etc.) because her idiot hubby didn’t get their life insurance?
It was SO bad, that the second running of the ad had the VO changed so that they WON’T have to do these things, because the husband DID get the insurance.
a 1 in 3 CHANCE of dying isn’t the same as a 33 PERCENT mortality rate.
One is a descriptor of what COULD happen, given the circumstance. The other is a descrition of what HAPPENED.
You have a 1-in-6 CHANCE of dying at Russian Uoulette, for example, but it is possible to play 100 times with a 100% success rate.
As to the commercials, trying to manipulate someone emotionally into a life-changing decision that has serious risks isn’t illegal, but it is irresponsible.