OBESE Irish teenagers could be forced to undergo stomach stapling to save their lives, according to a leading obesity expert.

Donal O’Shea, an endocrinologist and member of the National Taskforce on Obesity, said that unless Ireland’s childhood obesity epidemic is curbed, gastric reduction surgery, currently restricted to adults, may be performed on morbidly obese teens.

“It is the doomsday scenario that we would all want to avoid completely,” said O’Shea, who runs Ireland’s first dedicated obesity clinic at Loughlinstown hospital in Dublin.

“We are eight years behind America, and if the epidemic is not addressed, then we will also be operating on adolescents. It is the last thing that you want to do, but it is the only thing that works when people are morbidly obese.”

Earlier this month, the taskforce reported that 300,000 Irish children are overweight or obese and warned that the figure would rise by an additional 10,000 a year unless drastic action is taken.

Last week the Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance reported that one girl in four and one boy in five in the 5-12 age group is overweight or obese. Another all-Ireland study found that over a quarter of four-year-olds were overweight and 7% were obese.

More than 40 adults in Ireland have had gastric surgery — a procedure in which the stomach is stapled, leaving only a tiny pouch that can hold about half an ounce of food.

In America — where more than a third of the adult population and one in five children is seriously overweight — many surgeons refuse to perform gastric surgery on teenagers because of the risks.

“Surgery should always be the very last resort,” said Niall Moyna, a senior lecturer in exercise physiology at Dublin City University, who has worked with American children weighing from 18 to 23 stone. “The risks are high and increasingly surgeons aren’t prepared to deal with the prospect of losing a child in this way. Even though the medical problems associated with obesity are severe, these children can lose the weight with appropriate nutritional and exercise interventions.”

Moyna has warned of dire consequences if the government does not tackle childhood obesity. He believes that a large proportion of overweight school children will suffer heart disease, kidney failure, and a host of orthopaedic and respiratory problems in their twenties.

Irish teenagers could soon be treated with powerful medication, including Xenical, a fat-busting drug, which will shortly be approved for use on adolescents.

“It is terrible that we have got to a point where we are talking about drug treatment for adolescent obesity,” said O’Shea, who adds that the government could save millions by making powerful anti-fat drugs available to obese patients.

The consultant argues that the medication is vital in the fight against fat and is not being used enough in Ireland, where 18% of the population is obese.

In a study published last week in the International Journal of Obesity, O’Shea calculated that the annual cost of prescribing Xenical is €478 per patient, but that savings of more than €1,000 in medical treatment would be made from every patient taking the drug in terms of the long-term effects of shedding the pounds. Xenical works by blocking the absorption of fat by the body, but some patients do not respond to it.

“In patients who respond to Xenical, the average weight loss is between 5% and 10%,” said O’Shea. “Weight loss reduces the risk of heart attacks, complications for diabetes sufferers and reduces hospital admissions as well as the risk of cancer. It is in these areas that the long-term saving comes for the health sector.

“At the moment the rate of prescription in Ireland for weight-reducing medication such as Xenical is quite low. We are not treating obesity as aggressively as we should be.”

“At the moment we are handling it in the same way as we handled blood pressure 40 years ago. It is only over the past few decades that it has become acceptable to treat blood pressure with a number of tablets to get control over it.

“The bottom line is that it kills 2,000 people a year. There is medication for those suffering from the problem. And the cost savings to the health budget of using that would be significant.”

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