The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Obesity and Bariatric Surgery
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Obesity and Bariatric Surgery Abdulzahra Hussain 1
&
Kamal Mahawar 2 & Shamsi El-Hasani 3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic had overwhelmed the global health systems, resulting in a significant number of deaths especially in Europe and the United States of America (USA). Though it is impossible to be certain of the exact number of deaths and infections worldwide, the apparent COVID-19 case fatality rate in Italy seems to be higher than that in China (11.75% versus 4.02%). As of 11 April 2020, the apparent mortality rate in the United Kingdom (UK) was 12.50% (9875 deaths among confirmed 78,991 COVID-19 cases) compared with 3.7% in the USA [1, 2]. These figures are likely to change as we learn more about the pandemic and also because current numbers include a large number of patients who have not yet fully recovered from the disease as well as miss a large number of asymptomatic or undiagnosed patients. Though this pandemic will affect all walks of medicine, we feel the impact on bariatric surgery will be particularly harsher because of its rather fledgling nature in many parts of the world; conscious and subconscious bias against those suffering from obesity; future anticipated financial constraints; and significant technical expertise needed to perform bariatric surgery. We suggest that steps be taken now to try and mitigate some of those adverse consequences, and we should think about resource allocation, training needs, and the shape of future services to be fully equipped when we come out at the other end. Elective bariatric surgery has come to a grinding halt during this pandemic. This will add to the already stretched services known to have long waiting times. The effect will be more felt in countries such as the UK where privately funded surgery
* Abdulzahra Hussain [email protected] 1
Bariatric Unit, Department of General Surgery, Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, Doncaster, UK
2
Bariatric Unit, Department of General Surgery, Sunderland Royal Hospital, Sunderland, UK
3
Bariatric Unit, Department of General Surgery, PRUH, King’s College Hospitals, London, UK
accounts for a relatively smaller fraction of the overall bariatric activity and publicly funded provisions, even before the pandemic, lagged far behind its peers [3]. Based on the Getting It Right First Time (GRIFT 2017) report, fewer than 0.6% of patients eligible for bariatric surgery as per the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) criteria receive surgery each year [4]. The British government has written off the £13.4 billion National Health Service (NHS) debt [5] and some of this and additional sums of money will inevitably have to be allocated to resurrecting services that have suffered significantly during the pandemic. We just need to make sure that bariatric and metabolic surgery is a priority when we get to that stage, especially because this surgery is known to pay back for itself in ju
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