The study found that patients going abroad for bariatric surgery underestimate the risks of the procedure, reports Breaking News.
A national patient register for people who have had bariatric surgery abroad would help with appropriate medical follow-up if complications occur, the study’s co-authors have suggested, suggesting that there is currently none for Irish medical tourists.
A co-author of a study on global bariatric medical tourism, published this month in the Irish Medical Journal, highlighted the challenges of having an official record for these patients, including the time and place of surgery.
“The limited access to timely bariatric service in Ireland has led to significant waiting times. Cheaper weight loss procedures in certain parts of the world have incentivised patients to seek bariatric surgery abroad. There are multiple challenges associated with global bariatric tourism,” the co-authors noted, reports Breaking News.
“Patients do not have access to adequate information regarding the bariatric procedure and they resort to informal blogs to access this information resulting in patients to underestimate the risks associated with bariatric surgery and believe that their surgeries will be complication-free,” they added, reports Breaking News.
A study by University Hospital Galway, Wexford General Hospital, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Ninawa School of Medicine in Iraq examined four bariatric cases and concluded that all patients underwent “surgical intervention including reversal of the index bariatric procedure” when they returned to Ireland after surgery abroad.
So far, it is officially known that eight people have died abroad during plastic surgery abroad – several of these figures during or shortly after bariatric surgery.
A 58-year-old man with a BMI of 32.1 kg/m2 had a history of persistent vomiting after losing 22 kg since insertion of a gastric balloon (IGB) in Thailand on four occasions. Balloon insertion
The second case was a 49-year-old woman with a BMI of 35.1 kg/m2 who had an acute abdomen secondary to gastric perforation eight years after laparoscopic gastric banding in the Middle East.
The third case was a 53-year-old man with a BMI of 36.2 kg/m2 and refractory dyspepsia due to an IGB placement a year earlier in Prague, Czech Republic.
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