FAT people will no longer be given hip and knee replacements on the NHS in East Suffolk. GPs and consultants have agreed not to refer anyone classed as obese to a specialist until they have lost weight to help to save the area’s primary care trusts £47.9 million.

A team of GPs and senior consultants from Ipswich Hospital spent nine months investigating ways to address the trusts’ financial problems and drew up a list of criteria that must be met before treatment for conditions such as varicose veins and glue ear.

The team agreed that patients with a body mass index of 30 or more — recognised by the World Health Or- ganisation as obese — should not be referred to surgeons for hip and knee replacements.

In Britain, a fifth of men and a quarter of women are estimated to be obese. A 5ft 10in man weighing 15st 3lb and a 5ft 3in woman weighing 12st 7lb would be classed as obese by this measure.

Dr Brian Keeble, the Director of Public Health for Ipswich PCT and the leader of the team that devised the guidlines, said: “Patients who are overweight and obese do worse after operations. Lighter people tend to do better in terms of hip replacements not failing.”

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