The Washington Post reports that obese people are significantly less likely to die prematurely if they undergo stomach surgery to lose weight, according to two large new studies that offer the first convincing evidence that the health gains of losing weight translate into living longer. Full Article
The article doesn not provide full mortality statistics, but from my reading, it implies that out of 7,725 obese people, without surgery, roughly 528 would die after 10 years but with it only 317 would die. So for every 35 people doing the procedure, 1 life would be saved. (Pet Peeve: Why don’t these studies report the numbers needed to treat (NNT) as a standard statistic?)
What is more interesting is earlier news that the surgery could arrest type 2 diabetes within days, even before any significant weight loss occured. This implies there’s a bit more going on here than just making the stomach smaller.