Obesity 2016: Minimally Invasive Bariatric Devices Gaining Steam

With over two-thirds of US adults, equivalent to more than 136 million people, defined as overweight or obese (BMI >25 kg/m2), there is no end in sight for the obesity epidemic. Bariatric surgery remains the gold standard for treating patients with morbid obesity (BMI >40 kg/m2), but this is costly, irreversible and only 1% to 2% of the eligible patient population are willing or able to undergo these procedures. In 2015 alone, roughly 19 million US adults qualified as morbidly obese, and yet surgeons only performed an estimated 196,000 bariatric surgeries, including laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomies, gastric bypass surgeries, and laparoscopic adjustable bands according to recent estimates by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS). (See Figures 1 and 2.)