Bariatric surgery in adolescents

Obesity is a disease that affects millions of people around the world and generates very high hospital and treatment costs, which affects the economy of countries, and especially of families and sick patients.

The indications for bariatric surgery are established by the North American Association for Surgery for Obesity. The adolescent population group is not exempt from the complications derived from obesity, such as depression, orteoarticular diseases, sleep apnea, high risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and, mainly, diabetes and arterial hypertension.

These are the main justifications for considering adolescent patients as candidates for bariatric procedures. In case of meeting the requirement of a body mass index greater than 30, they do not differ from adult patients, since the diseases and complications caused by obesity in this type of patient or age group justify bariatric procedures, with the sole difference that the surgical options are limited to procedures of the exclusively restrictive type, such as the intragastric balloon, the Bariclip gastric sleeve and gastroplication.

The reason for this restriction of procedures is because these operations only limit the amount of food that the stomach is capable of storing but do not affect the route through which food is digested and, above all and most importantly, the absorption of these nutrients along the digestive tract is not affected.

The latter is extremely important in the group of adolescent patients, since they are developing and the supply of nutrients is extremely important for their adequate growth. For this reason, any patient between the ages of 14 and 18 can be a candidate for a bariatric procedure, excluding malabsorptive surgeries such as the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, mini gastric bypass, or biliopancreatic diversion (SADIS).

In the same way, we consider that given the physical and mainly emotional particularities of these patients, it is important to carry out a thorough assessment and preliminary work in psychology and nutrition, which will take a couple of months before de tomar la decisión de someterse a una cirugía bariátrica.