Surgical Treatment of Obesity

What Is Obesity?

Obesity is an abnormally large amount of fat. Men who have more than 25% of their total body weight as fat and women who have more than 30% of their total body weight as fat are considered obese. Using this definition, greater than 23% of men and 30% of women in the United States are obese.

Severe or morbid obesity is defined as greater than 100 lbs. above ideal body weight, or greater than twice the ideal body weight. Although it occurs in an unknown number of people, it is estimated that somewhere around 6% of men and 8% or more of women in the United States are morbidly obese. In fact, obesity is an illness of developed societies, since it is much more common in well-developed countries, such as the United States, when compared to underdeveloped nations, such as Africa.

Why should we care about morbid obesity? >>

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