The Fundamentals of Bariatric Surgery

The prevalence of obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) > 30 kg/m2, has been steadily increasing in the United States and worldwide. Increased body mass is associated with an increased incidence of a wide range of medical problems affecting virtually every organ system. Each five-point increase in BMI over 25 kg/m2 is associated with a 30% increase in mortality. Furthermore, obesity also significantly affects quality of life, social functioning, and monetary health. The management of obesity is complex, often requiring an amalgamation of medical, dietary and psychological regimens to successfully tackle this multidimensional disease. Respectively, bariatric surgery has been utilized as a modality to manage morbid obesity and meta-analyses have demonstrated the efficacy of bariatric surgery in treating severe obesity and its associated co-morbidities. An effect of this high utility benefit is reflected in an exponential increase in the the number of bariatric operations performed in the United States (an 804 percent increase from 1998 to 2004. Hence, there are thousands of individuals yearly who have undergone or are undergoing bariatric surgery to manage morbid obesity. This book, is intended to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the management of the bariatric surgical patient. All of the contributors have been carefully selected as they each represent key opinion leaders in their own specific discipline regarding the assessment of the bariatric patient and we hope that all the readers will get as much enjoyment in reading their contributions as we have had in preparing this seminal work.