Devices Treat Obesity Patients without Options

Whether one eats to live or lives to eat, modern man’s relationship with food has clearly gotten out of control. In the US, more than two-thirds of adults age 20 and older are now classified as overweight or obese, to the tune of 127 million overweight adults, 66 million obese adults ,and 9 million morbidly obese adults, according to a report published in February by the Medtech Insight division of Windhover Information. (See, "US Marketsfor Obesity Drugs and Bariatric Surgical Devices".) The US is by no means the only country in which the combination of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and a diet high in fats has created an obesity epidemic. The prevalence of obesity is increasing across the globe, from Europe to Southeast Asia. Today, more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight and 312 million of them are obese. What bodes even worse for the future: 155 million children worldwide are overweight or obese according to the World Health Organization.

Health institutions have taken to calling obesity an epidemic, to make it clear that treating it is not an aesthetic issue. Obesity shortens the life spans of patients. Excess weight...