THE NUMBER of patients undergoing major stomach surgery on the NHS has more than doubled in the past three years.

Radical surgical procedures to reduce the size of the stomach, such as gastric bypasses, gastric banding and duodenal switches, have become increasingly popular for patients who fail traditional weight-loss regimes.

Data from NHS hospitals, released by the Department of Health, show that more than 600 gastric banding procedures and related operations were carried out in 2003-04, up from 300 in 2000-01. It is estimated that 4,300 people will have obesity surgery this year, compared with 2,287 in 2004, mostly at private clinics.

A similar rise occurred in the mid-1990s in America, where obesity is a greater problem than in Britain. According to research published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, there will be nearly 10 times as many operations to control obesity performed in the US in 2005 as there were in 1998. There were 13,365 such operations, primarily gastric bypasses, in 1998 and 102,794 in 2003. It is predicted that there will have been 130,000 this year and 218,000 in 2010.

While the operations can be highly effective, many health professionals have expressed reservations about the risks. A second paper this month in the journal suggests that patients are twice as likely to be hospitalised a year after an operation to control obesity as if they had stayed obese. Recent research published in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested gastric banding carried a 2 per cent risk of death.

There are three main stomach surgery techniques: gastric bypass, in which a small pouch is formed using the top of the stomach and reconnected to the small intestine; duodenal switch, in which two-thirds of the stomach is removed and two-thirds of the intestine bypassed; and gastric banding, in which an adjustable silicone ring is looped around the stomach and attached to a port sewn into abdominal muscles.

A patient typically loses just under 50 per cent of excess weight after gastric banding or 62 per cent after a gastric bypass. More invasive procedures, such as removing parts of the stomach, can achieve 68 per cent weight loss.

Diego Maradona, the former Argentine soccer international, said he lost more than 4st (27kg) after having stomach surgery in March. Buster Bloodvessel, singer with the band Bad Manners, went from 31st to 13st after surgery.

In Britain it is estimated that as many as 30,000 people die prematurely every year from obesity-related conditions. Britain’s first obesity hospital, a private clinic in Birmingham called the National Hospital for Obesity Surgery, opened last year. This year a hospital in Sheffield said it was considering gastric banding for children as young as 14.

The Department of Health said that the number of weight reduction operations was likely to continue to rise for people with morbid obesity who had failed to lose weight by all appropriate non-surgical treatments. “It will only be recommended after a full assessment by the specialist and other healthcare professionals.”

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