Obese children will be given stomach-shrinking surgery on the NHS under new guidelines to be issued by the government’s health rationing body, writes Sarah-Kate Templeton.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) will recommend that children qualify for stomach stapling operations once they reach puberty. Previous Nice guidance stated that the radical operations could only be carried out on adults aged 18 and over.

The guidelines, which will go out to public consultation, also recommend that grossly overweight children are prescribed the anti-obesity drugs Xenical and Reductil. The drugs will mainly be given to youngsters aged 12 and over but younger children will qualify in exceptional circumstances.

Last month an influential report by three government watchdogs said ministers were at risk of missing their target to halt the rise in childhood obesity by 2010. Incidence of childhood obesity grew from 9.6% in 1995 to 13.7% in 2003.

Obesity operations cost about £6,000 but surgeons argue they save the NHS money in the long term because they help avoid future health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

Roger Ackroyd, a surgeon at the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, went against the present guidelines to carry out obesity surgery on a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Ackroyd believes the change of guidance will encourage other surgeons to carry out the operations. He says surgery is necessary for children who have been unable to lose weight by changing diet or taking more exercise.

But Beckie Lang, spokeswoman for the Association of the Study of Obesity, said: “It is a tragedy if children are reaching such a level of obesity that we need to operate on them. This reflects a failure to treat children at an earlier stage.”

The number of adults undergoing stomach surgery on the NHS has almost doubled in the past three years. Department of Health figures show that about 530 gastric banding procedures and related operations were carried out in 2003-4, up from about 300 in 2000-1.

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