420-Pound Teen to Get Free Gastric Bypass
 

Private Facility to Fund Gastric Bypass

Thu Oct 14, 3:20 PM ET

HOUSTON - Two doctors and a hospital offered a free gastric bypass to a 420-pound teenager after another medical center canceled the procedure because his insurance would not pay for it.

Doctors at Obesity Surgery Specialists said 16-year-old Brandon Bennett needs the operation for a chance at a healthy life.

Brandon is often sent home from school because of high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate, and he is too big to be allowed on rides at Six Flags Astroworld.

He had been set to have the bypass at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston this month, until the insurance issue surfaced. After the Houston Chronicle reported on his health problems, the obesity center contacted his family this week.

Pending a final review of Brandon's medical records, the procedure will be performed at Houston Community Hospital, which is also donating its services, said Laurie Cantrell, bariatric program director at Obesity Surgery Specialists.

The so-called stomach-stapling surgery, which usually costs about $25,000, is considered a last resort for morbidly obese people.

Doctors create an egg-sized pouch in the upper stomach and attach it to a section of intestine, reducing how much food patients can eat. Risks of surgery include malnutrition, stomach problems, infections and, rarely, death.

Demand for gastric bypasses has soared following successful procedures by celebrities such as broadcaster Al Roker and singer Carnie Wilson.

Obesity Surgery Specialists has performed about 230 gastric bypasses in the last two years, though none were on adolescents.

Brandon's father, Michael Bennett, said he has confidence in a surgical team experienced in adult surgery because his son, who is 6-foot-2, has the physiology of a grown man.

"I can't believe this is finally going to happen," Michael Bennett said. "I didn't know people like this existed in the world."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._gastric_bypass

When will people finally figure out that these drastic surgerys are completely unnecessary. What he [and others like him] needs is to give LCing a try. At over 320 (probably closer to 330-340 lbs) and a BMI of 43-45 I probably could have qualified for such a surgery if I'd wanted it. But, I gave LCing a try and am glad I did.

That's really sad. "Last resort?" He's only sixteen - how could he have run out of options already?



This statement bothers me. WLS is an elective surgery that fixes something that ain't broke, so to speak.



Amen - because that's how he's going to be eating afterward, anyway.

while i dont advocate wls i dont condemn it automatically either. i would never want to wls but this kid if you read the article is "supposedly" having serious complications from his weight like high blood episodes that send him home from school regularly. i imagine the poor kid is stuck in a vicious cycle of serious carb cravings from insulin problems, etc.

sorry to say that i feel that maybe in this case it would be warranted. it sounds as if his health is in immediate danger requiring drastic action. 420 lbs is a lot of weigh for anyone but it must be worse on a growing 16 yr old -the stress it puts on his body. from the reasons he gets sent home a lot it sounds like his blood pressure is out of control which can be deadly suddenly. i hope they do something quickly for him.

I'm sorry to have to disagree Jedswife. Whether he looses weight through gastric bypass or LC'ing, the speed at which he loose will be similar. The surgery does not make him immediately better; it simply forces him to eat small portions of LC food. Good results could potentially be achieved just as well with LC'ing, without having to butcher his insides.

But of course, doctors don't recommended Atkins for kids. It's not good for growing kids they say. Much better to chop up their stomach. Even if the long term consequences of WL surgery are unknown, it's got to be better than that "fad" diet.

It's thinking like that, that has totally turned me off doctors. I was forced to realize that, educated and intelligent as they are, they are still relying on facts "everyone knows". Everyone knows that Atkins is bad for you; therefore WL surgery is safer than Atkins. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt. Worst case scenario is that they push WL surgery because it's so damn lucrative.

When I watched Supersize me, there was a scene that stayed with me. A man was about to have WL surgery. Turns out that he would drink 1 gallon to 1 1/2 gallon of soda each day. He was diabetic (duh....really?). The surgeon said proudly "Gastric bypass is the only known procedure to cure diabetes". Maybe it's just me, but I noted the careful use of the term "procedure". Technically he's right. What he carefully didn't say was that LC'ing cured diabetes as well, only it's not lucrative like "procedures". What made me sick is that people hearing that will immediately assume that WL surgery is the only thing that cures diabetes. Clever bit of marketing there.

Unfortunately, teenagers experience often volatile mood swings. I think that for a 16 year old, still in many ways a child, the enforced discipline of a diet might be too tough to handle or stick with. If it takes surgery to give him the boost he needs to get on the right track, then I'm glad he has the opportunity. It's hard enough for us adults to find the internal strength to follow something like Atkins, no matter how good it is for us. Try to get a teenager, watching his buddies eat their pizza and drink their soda pop, to deny himself, when he already probably has so many issues of self-doubt and lack of confidence, the comfort of food - it could be asking too much. I would think that the bypass would allow portion control, while good follow-up counselling would help him make healthy and wise choices after the surgery. He needs help - 16 is too young to be that heavy, and the thought of losing it on his own could be overwhelming for him. If he has confidence in the surgery, and if money is no longer an issue, then I say go for it, and give the boy a chance. But perhaps do the least intrusive type of surgery - isn't there a type of surgery that ties off a portion of the stomach that is a little safer? I'm not up on the details - I just remember back to how I felt as a teen, and also how I felt at 265 pounds - the hopelessness etc. But I'm 44 years old - at 16, it might have gotten the best of me.

It's not impossible to diet as a teen. I started LCing when I was 17, and stuck with it. :)

I think we should refrain from passing judgement on this young man and his family. As a parent of two teens, I am well aware of how complicated their emotional life is. As a parent of a teen who has had emotional problems, I am also well aware of how easy it is for outsiders to think they have the answer to my child's problems, when they have no clue as to what is really going on. I have been on the wrong end of well meant advice way too many times.

We don't have all the facts here. I feel sad that this young man is in this situation, but I will not judge him or his family for how they choose to deal with it.

I don't think we need to treat teenagers like idiots. They can reason and think for themselves. I'm sure that if someone in authority (like a doctor) told this fellow that if he just cut out his soda pop and sugar and trans fat because they were killing him, he would gladly do so. Unfortunately, he is getting absolutely no dietary guidance from anyone that I can see. If people can feed their epileptic children an extremely low carb diet so they don't get seizures, I'm sure they can tell a teen how to eat (if they really knew how to eat themselves). Even if this teen gets surgery, if he continues eating the crap he has been eating, even if he loses weight, he will never be healthy.

Yes, I agree - I dieted as a teen as well. And as a young adult, and as an adult, and again and again. But I wasn't over 400 pounds at the time, and it doesn't appear that you were either - forgive me if I'm wrong. All I'm saying is that sometimes what seems like the right answer for one person isn't the right answer for another. I'm sure that all the options have been considered and that the family and medical staff are making what they feel is the best decision under the circumstances. Let's hope that follow-up nutritional and fitness counselling will be provided.

THere is this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1372832.stm

There is also another form of gastric bypass that is less invasive, but at this moment, the name escapes me.

I started LCing when I was 20, and I'm 22 now. I actually gained 122 lbs, going from 5'8" 168 lbs to 6'0" 290 lbs between ages 15 and 17. I was on LF Diets when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19...I could have probably stuck to the first one if I could have just had Red Meat.

Basically, it was No Red Meat/Refined Sugar/Caffeine, Low Calorie/Fat/Saturated Fat, High Complex Carbs, Moderate Protein (Bread, Pasta, Fish, Skinless Chicken, and Baked Potatoes.) The thing that killed that diet was I just couldn't pass up a 16 oz. Ribeye after a couple months with little to no weight loss.

Since, it had already been pounded into my head that the Steak was the worst thing, I figured I'd blown it and got a Pepsi and Fries with it. I really didn't miss the Soda/Fries that much, I just wanted the Steak...and of course some REAL BUTTER [and more than 1 pat worth] on my Baked Potatoes. I don't care what they say, I could believe it was not Butter...

If I'd known about LCing back then, I would've tried it in a heartbeat...and I could probably have stuck to it even back in my early teens. I didn't even know there was anything other than Low-Fat/Low-Calorie for dieting until a friend told me about his success with Atkins and I gave it a try.

Great point! Tell the kid "If you don't stick to this diet you may die (true in this case) and the kid will either care or not care enough to take care of himself. Besides that, while he is a kid the parents are in charge anyway. They could probably help him fix his situation without risking his death in a dangerous surgical procedure that doesn't fix diddly squat. Are these parents just too lazy? Are their doctors this dumb?

Isn't it some sort of abuse to fatten up a child like livestock and then hire someone to butcher him?

I know diet decisions are hard. Anyone who has read many of my posts knows that I am one the worst food addicts in existence. I make decisions every day that influence my health and weight, some good and some bad, but I cannot imagine having surgery just because I lack enough will power to quit poisoning myself. Surgery would not change my state of mind when it comes to food.

Of course we don't know all the facts in this case, but it seems obvious that almost all cases of WLS are unneeded.

AND!!!!! Low carb doesn't add the risk of the surgery itself! No anesthesia needed....no risk of infection, bleeding, etc.

But they can't recomend LC, it's dangerous! :rolleyes:

Whether you agree or disagree with it, it is still getting quite a bit of publicity lately. My DH and I were just talking today about how often the surgery is in the news lately. I don't think it helps that all these celebs are coming out and praising it either. You know how it is with celebs- if they endorse it then of course it is safe and healthy [sigh].

I'd think that the risks involved w/this type of surgery would make this boy and his parents want to try many different diets before electing the surgery, just make sure there were no other options. (I can't tell from the article if they did this or not...) Anyway, a good friend of mine recently had gastric bypass surgery and her insurance company made her go on a diet (not sure what kind but I think it was lower carb) for 6 months just to make sure that there really was no other way. I guess she just didn't lose enough weight, so they went ahead with the operation.
Basically, I just don't think people are aware of the risks and consequenses of this procedure. I read somewhere that the risk of fatal complications is 1 in 200! If this is accurate, the risk would be too high for me to consider the operation, nor would I want a family member to undergo it.
Some of the previous posts expressed doubts about the boys ability to stay on a low carb diet, even though it would help him. The fact is, after the operation, he will be FORCED to diet. People who have had this surgery tell me that when they overeat, they experience unbelievable stomache cramps, even chest pain and profuse sweating. That can't be healthy! I suppose after overeating a few times, they learn not to do it again. But wouldn't it be better to learn not to overeat on your own, gradually, through diet, than to force your body to give you extreme signals?
I have learned the hard way that eating too much sugar free candy is a bad thing. But I'm glad that if I happen to do it again, I probably won't experience symptoms of a heart attack, just mild cramps and...well I won't be gross. lol

this is just a sad quote i think. he is 16. 16!!!!! you know, like all those 16 year olds that are driving down the road that you and your kids are ALSO driving on. if 16 year olds cant "handle" a diet, i dont think they should be handling vehicles, aka. thousands of pounds of WEAPONRY.

secondly, he is going to need discipline when he cant eat a darn thing that isnt liquid for a few months. he IS 16, if the food isnt in the house and he isnt given the money to go buy it, thats it. he cant eat it. its probably a lot easier that when you ARE an adult and you can get up and go to the store and buy cakes and cookies and no one is going to stop you and you have the money, etc.

i can understand how some people get offended by this topic, but get over it! this is life and death, and not for an adult who is making his/her own choices, but for a child/children. in some extreme cases (perhaps this one) they are innocent VICTIMS. if you have ever seen some talk shows with overweight babies, it is absolutely 100% criminal what these parents do, PERIOD!!!! 250 pound 5 year old??? why dont you just shoot the heroine directly into her arm????????

Exactly. You see some kid on TV eating a box of cereal for breakfast, a pan of brownies for a snack, two large pizzas for lunch, and five cheeseburgers and three orders of fries for dinner. Meanwhile the child's parents are crying "We just can't understand why little Johnny is so fat."

It should be criminal to be so stupid.

I wish I could be as kind to the medical establishment as you, Angeline. I accuse them of more than simple ignorance. They resist LC because it cuts into profits.

All I'M seeing are a bunch of unscrupulous money-hungry bariatric surgeons electing some poor super morbidly obese teenager to "Jared-ize" their expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary surgery.

It's kind of how Pepsi might sponsor health camps for kids and programs designed to teach people healthy eating... or Tabacco might support lung cancer awareness initiatives.
On one hand you can say Pepsi/Tabacco is being humanitarian, a corporation with a heart who cares about it's community.
On the other hand, you can see that Pepsi/Tabacco stands to financially gain by improving their unhealthy image by associating themselves with health (especially children's health, seeing as it is children who start to use Pepsi & Tabacco products most often). Though Pepsi is not actually changing anything about their products make them healthier, just by getting the word out that "Pepsi is sponsoring/supporting programs to encourage healthy eating habits in children", by association Pepsi seems healthier to people. Put an ugly thing next to something beautiful, and the ugliness is minimized by the beauty of the adjacent object. At first the contrast will be jarring to the senses, unusual, it won't "feel right". After awhile, you start to consider the ugly thing as belonging and beautiful as well simply because of it's association with beauty.

I have no doubt a similar motivation is at work here. Those bariatric surgeons know full well that this "humanitarian" effort to "rescue a teenage boy from obesity" is going to increase public support of bariatric surgery, for several reasons.
1) The boy's progress will be documented, probably by Oprah, Dr. Phil, Entertainment/E! TV and other trash TV journalism. A nation will watch him shrink down, seemingly "effortlessly" (which they will be sure to do, minimize the risks/sacrifices and emphasize the "wow I'm magically losing weight" aspect of the surgery). Many many obese people at home will consider elective weight loss surgery because of the boy's success.
2) That they picked someone so young is not a coincidence. I'm sure they took surveys and polls, and discovered that (surprise surprise) one of the reasons people who qualify for bariatric surgery don't choose to have it, is because of the risks/dangers. If they show the surgery can be safely be performed on a child, and that child can thrive and enjoy a "thin life"... imagine all the people who will change their minds about surgery.

In other words, it's all about $$$. Yes, they may be giving away free surgery... but the advertisement and PR they gain is worth way, way, way more than the raw costs of the professionals time and materials. This will be a boon for the bariatric surgery business.

There are some instances where I can see radical surgery justifiable. For example, if one's life is in immediate danger, if they face certain death due to complications from obesity and need to lose weight ASAP, then I can see justifying the surgery. However, in NO other case can I see it as reasonable or human or even moral. Bariatric surgery doesn't give you anything you can't obtain much more safely with finding the right diet and/or mental therapy treatments for you. All it does is make it really hard to eat too much. It does nothing to address the causes of over eating (insulin problems, emotional/behavioral disorders, etc). It's a barbaric surgery, and doctors who perform it are mostly a cabal of unscrupulous thieves preying on the hopes and fears of desperate people.

Very well put Woo!

I agree 100%

And if he doesn't do well, they'll do everything they can to keep it quiet! And of course, they'll look for a way to blame the child for the failure!

Some additional information on the risks and success rates of bariatric surgery:

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/14/1689_51239

There are grown men and women who couldn't find the "willpower" or "motivation" to lose weight until it was nearly too late. There are people all over the board, mature adults, who admit to yo-yo dieting, who admit to cheating, who admit to eating the wrong foods for too long even after they know better, who admit that their cravings are too powerful to withstand. Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives....IOW, people who should know better and be able to stick with it.

This boy is 16, and I would guess has serious emotional problems. I'm no Dr. Phil, but I would be he suffers from Depression and low self-esteem. He's not healthy physically, mentally, or probably emotionally. His parents are responsible for feeding him, for taking care of his health, and somehow, somewhere they failed. This surgery might not just be for the boy, but for the parents as well. It might be <I>their</I> wake up call.

I agree that the bypass surgery is largely unnecessary, and it won't accomplish anything LCing won't accomplish. I know every person on this board has a vested interest in LC working and how its protrayed, and I think some people might be a little defensive and that's led to some of the responses of these threads. But imagine how utterly hopeless you felt at your highest weight, how terrible it was, and then imagine being a kid on top of that.

When I was 16, I weighed nearly 300 pounds, and I cried myself to sleep every night. If somebody had offered this surgery to me, I would have jumped on it with both feet and thanked my lucky stars. Shoot, even if I knew then what I know now, I'd have the same reaction.

exactly, wouldnt it be easier to control the way your kid eats while your still the one feeding him???? why wait till he becomes an adult like us and he has as hard a time as we do. you know, i, and probably a lot of us here, were heavy children. did i feed myself????? no. my mother fed me and she fed high fat and high carb everything. i dont blame her necessarily but dont tell me if you only have low carb available the kid wont eat it???? if my mom had low carb (hell even low fat) in the house, i dont think i would have been as heavy as i was. i was not going to start eating the drywall!!!!

hmmmmmm....a shame that this surgery is to help the parents when its the child who will have to suffer through it. god forbid their child dies on that operating table and they have a REAL "wake up call." as in, "i should have tossed that junk food, i dont care if it wasnt for him, i should have gotten it out of the house in case he ate it. i should have just tried atkins, i should have put his health above my convenience and oh my kid would be alive!!!"

I was raised by a thin mother and a somewhat plump grandmother who nagged me constantly to lose weight. I grew up hearing, "Bread is fattening, potatoes are fattening, bananas are fattening, eat lots of fruits and vegetables." I wasn't even all that fat -- at 5'9" I wore a 1970s size 14 (probably the equivalent of a 10 today) when I graduated from high school -- but they focused on my weight all the time. Nothing else mattered to them. What it taught me was to sneak around, not trust my body, eat in response to external cues (what they allowed me) rather than in response to my internal hunger. I didn't have a really serious weight problem then, but I sure grew up to have one. Parents trying to "control" their kids' eating can really backfire.

When I had children, I vowed that I would never try to control their eating the way my mother and grandmother tried to control mine. I tried to let them eat in response to their own internal hunger cues, not in response to my feelings of when and how much it was appropriate for them to eat. I talked to my kids about what they needed to eat to be healthy, but not about what they needed to eat to be thin. We always had cookies and other treats in the house and they always had access to them, although they knew they had to be eaten as part of a balanced diet.

The first time my mother mentioned weight to one of them, I told her that if she ever, ever, ever said anything to either of them about their weight again, she would never see them again. Both my kids had body builds similar to mine when I was a pre-adolescent -- somewhat plump, but certainly not obese. As teens, both of them slimmed down and they are now quite thin (my daughter is 5'6" and 125 pounds and my son is about 6'2" and 160 pounds). Would they have been thin if I nagged them about their weight? Who knows? I do know that they would not trust me the way they do now or confided in me the way they do now and I am thankful that they trust me in a way that I will never trust my mother.

All this is by way of saying that it is not so simple to just blame parents for their kids' weight. Parents, with the best of intentions, may do things that cause their kids to develop eating disorders (mine did and while I fault their methods, I don't fault their intentions). Not every child who is raised in a house with healthy food ends up thin -- I did not. Let's not assume that we have all the answers for this family that we know nothing about.

Amen Liz!!!!!!!!!!!! :cheer:

Very well said! :bhug:

Nonnie

As the parent of an obese teenager, I would like to remind everyone that the parents may not have understood how to eat healthily and couldn't teach their child. I certainly didn't understand how food was processed in the body until starting a lc way of life a year or so ago. Without that knowledge and being overweight myself, I couldn't keep my child from gaining weight. And believe me, I tried.

I truly feel like eating low carb is the solution to a medical problem. It is like a switch has been flipped for me. I wish there were some way for us to get the message about the low carb way of life out to every parent. We need to break the cycle by educating the parents, especially when their children are young.

well, i dont really understand your point liz. although you appear to want to contradict what i am saying, you are actually proving my point: good or bad, parents control their childrens eating habits. thats all i am saying. the way i grew up was one example and the way you group up, another. they were totally different but ended up nearly at the same place!


this quote is contradictory. it shows that you agree with my view that childrens diets (in childhood) are based around what the parents views on diet are.
when i say "control the way your kid eats," i dont mean lock up the cookies and berate him for eating fries. i mean control how they see food in their lives AND control what you pack in their lunch box and cook them for dinner. whats wrong with that??

Well, I am 60 now, but my first diet was when I was 13 years old. At that time I was on a low calorie diet to lose 30 lbs. My weight at the time was 166 lbs and I went down to 130 lbs. It took a whole year for me to lose 36 lbs. During this time I never ate anything that I was not supossed to. I did my diet very well, so childreen are able to do diets superbly if they want to. However, I lost muscle, my boobs sagged and my tights became flabby, which is something that stayed with me the rest of my life making it totally miserable. Over the years I have gained and lost thousands of pounds, until I found LC. Now at least I have hope.

The only person I know that had a gastric bypass, has regained all her weight plus more and today she is probably close to 500 lbs. She used to be around 320.