Medical science has progressed so much to day that there is a "surgical' solution for almost every ailment man is facing. Only to day there was this report which highlighted the efforts of surgeons to implant an artificial pancreas in a child to overcome the Type I diabetes disease! Like this transplantation and implantation are common for many organs like heart, liver, kidney etc and thousands of such "operations" are performed every day across the world giving new lease of life to people, who otherwise are condemned to a life of uncertainty and enormous anxiety burden. Now comes a news from the US that the drug authorities there have approved a medical device that can be implanted in obese patients who otherwise are not responding to any treatment for reducing their body weight. Here is a take on this interesting development which may give hope to millions of obese individuals to cut down their misery.
"EnteroMedics' Maestro System has become the first obesity device to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in ten years. The device, which the company compares to a pacemaker, is designed to block signals in the nervous system to reduce feelings of hunger. Obesity is, excuse the phrasing, a growing problem across the world. It is estimated that one third of Americans are clinically obese. While eating less is may present the simplest and most obvious solution for many, combating obesity or stimulating weight loss, especially in the morbidly obese, is not a linear problem. Often it is simply not practicable or effective for those treating obese patients to recommend diet and exercise, and more drastic treatments such bariatric surgery are too invasive for some patients or may have other adverse effects. The now FDA approved Maestro System, which has been in use in Australia since mid-2011, is implanted via an outpatient procedure. By applying electrical pulses in what EnteroMedics calls VBLOC vagal blocking therapy, it is designed to interfere with signals between the stomach and the brain along the vagus nerve, which regulates the digestive system. Like other approaches to suppressing appetite , the desired result is to decrease feelings of hunger or induce a sense of satiety. The implanted system is connected to a battery which must be regularly recharged by the patient".
It is not that weight reduction methods are not available for dealing with such extreme weight related cases but when all available methods do not bring in desired results, what else one can do except going in for extreme measures like the implantation. The new technique though considered minimally invasive, still entails surgery to position the rechargeable battery device, similar to a cardiac pace maker, for blocking hunger signals coming from the brain through the vagus nerve system resulting in lesser feeling of hunger and consequently lesser eating. This new therapy is intended mainly for those with BMI 35 and beyond with health problems like CVD and other life style diseases. Unlike Bariatric surgery where part of the intestine is stapled to reduce volume of food eaten, vagus nerve intervention therapy is done as an out patient procedure without any need of hospitalization. A word of caution is called for and that is, while opting for this therapy it is inadvisable to opting for it by healthy individuals for becoming lean in a hurry!
V.H.POTTY
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V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com
V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com
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