When, in 2008, it was revealed by the tabloid press that the television presenter Fern Britton had been fitted with a gastric band it led to considerable debate about the pros and cons of such invasive weight loss surgery.
There was considerable anger that Britton, who had lost a considerable amount of weight in the preceding two years, had never admitted to having had the surgery whilst also advertising low fat foods and advocating healthy eating as a way of losing weight.
Britton’s story also had another consequence, however: it demonstrated to the British public just how effective the fitting of a gastric band could be: Britton lost over five stone and dropped from a size sixteen to a size ten in two years.
Ten years ago gastric band surgery was considered a last resort for obesity and only a handful of surgeries were performed each year. Last year the number had risen to over 10,000 operations per year, half of which were carried out on the NHS. With one in four British adults now deemed obese, the demand for the operation is on the increase. Healthcare Trusts, however, are only able to set aside a certain amount of their annual budgets for surgical operations: this is leading to a lottery when it comes to whether or not a patient will be given a gastric band.
There are no guidelines set down regarding how obese someone should be before being offered this surgery. Ironically it is far more obvious when not to offer the surgery - if the patient’s level of obesity will lead to complications on the operating table for example. Moreover if a patient lives in an area of the country where obesity is prevalent and the demand is high for the operation then they too might not be offered the surgery when they would have been in another region of the UK.
So as gastric band operations steadily increase in this country, so too does the element of chance whether or not individual patients will be offered this treatment.