WEIGHING anything up to 55 stone and with a life expectancy of just three to five years, one group of patients are desperate to take advantage of a new service at Hexham General Hospital.

The morbidly obese have welcomed the arrival of surgeons Sean Woodcock and Keith Seymour with open arms.

The service they have been offering from other hospitals in the North of Tyne NHS Healthcare Trust is now being expanded to Hexham, to help tackle a huge waiting list.

Around 70,000 morbidly obese men and women across the North-East need surgery now to prolong their lives.

Specialising in bariatric surgery – in particular, the installation of gastric bands to reduce the stomach capacity to the size of an egg – Sean and Keith are quite literally throwing some patients a lifeline.

They have operated on people with a body mass index of 100, when the healthy norm lies somewhere in the 18 to 25 bracket.

“Some of these people are languishing at home. They haven’t been out for years and someone’s feeding them,” said Sean.

“By this stage they have a life expectancy of three to five years and they present a complex medical case.”

A multi-disciplinary team, including GPs, dieticians, psychologists and specialist nurses, swings into action to try to turn their lives around.

While they can be the “most grateful patients around”, not all of them make the distance to get on to Sean and Keith’s operating list.

Candidates for surgery first have to complete a 12-week programme designed to re-educate their palates and get them exercising.

Tackling their psychological problems is also important.

Sean said: “Up to a quarter of our patients have been abused as children. Subconsciously, they are over-eating to make themselves ugly, so they are no longer attractive to the abusers.

“Ultimately they need an operation to save their life, but they need the psychological help first – we are treating the whole person.”

The operating theatres in Hexham General will be used to treat the ‘fit fat’, those who haven’t yet developed diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnoeia and arthritis that follow in the wake of obesity.

Surgery can be life-transforming, said Keith, particularly for young women wanting to start a family.

Obesity can prevent conception, and anyone with a body mass index over 35 won’t be accepted on a fertility programme.

Keith said: “We are not offering cosmetic surgery. The NHS is working to prevent serious illness and the expense it will inevitably assume in the long term.

“There is also the additional cost of someone not being able to work, the loss of tax revenue, and the fact they are probably living on benefits.”

An immediate effect of surgery can be the patient’s renewed sensitivity to their own insulin, curing their diabetes.

The treatment is deemed to have been successful if the patient loses more than 50 per cent of their excess body weight within two years of surgery.

The failures – those liquidising Mars Bars to ‘beat’ the gastric band – are far outweighed by the successes.

A 20 stone weight loss is not uncommon, and the rewards for the surgeons are equally satisfying, said Keith.

“I had a postman who was about to lose his job, because he could hardly walk and he was suffering from depression.

“He’s now back at work full time, his pain is greatly reduced, and he’s got his life back.”

Source: Hexham Courant