RCSI Alumni Magazine 2018

Page 32

SURGERY

The issue of obesity in patients presenting for surgery has serious implications for pre-operative procedures and post-operative outcomes, not to mention the surgery itself, as RCSI alumnus Daniel O’Reilly (Class of 2017) discovered.

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ery few health issues today cause such a range of problems as obesity. This complex, multifactorial condition has been approached from almost every angle academically but represents a unique practical problem for both patients preparing for surgery and the surgeons themselves. Even excluding the poor health on average of this cohort of patients, which is compromised by a combination of high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes, size alone restricts or prevents surgical diagnosis, pre- and perioperative care and intervention. The epidemic of obesity is no longer restricted to high-income economies

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with many health services in low-to-middle income nations suffering the ‘double hit’ of both malnutrition and excessive calorific intake. Closer to home, a 2014 Lancet paper analysing data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013, illustrated that around two-thirds of Irish men and half of Irish women were now either overweight or obese [1]. The same study also grabbed the headlines in the press with the dark prophecy that we are to become the “fattest nation in Europe by 2020”. So what will be the possible effects in our surgical clinics over the next two years as this comes to pass? Surgery has a unique relationship with diagnostic imaging with good quality radiological investigation not only key to diagnosis but to procedural planning,

MOLLY FERGUSON

TOO FAT FOR


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