Bariatric Surgery: How Will It Change In The Next Decade? - Dr. Fobi (VIDEO)

Dr. Fobi:

What is interesting about bariatric surgery is that, when we started doing it, we did the procedures. Most of bariatric procedures evolved from observing complications from other surgical procedures. So we adopted the procedures and we did them. We are just beginning to understand the physiology of the operations we do. For instance, in the Fobi pouch and the gastric bypass, we are now understanding that there are hormones that are released by the body by bypassing part of this stomach and the duodenum that controls the appetite center, and the way I look at it and I talk about this all the time, I see in 10 to 15 years that a medication would be developed to do exactly what the surgery does once we understand how the surgery works. We have been able to get a good understanding and there are more academic centers now that are doing bariatric surgery and studying the hormonal effects and this is going to go to same way as ulcer surgery went.

For those who are old enough to know, when people used to have ulcers we used to do ulcer surgery by cutting their stomach and that’s how we found out about weight loss surgery. Now, we give medications for people with ulcers because we have finally found out how the ulcer surgery worked and we were able to develop medications to do what they do.

So my prognosis is that 20 years from today there will be very few bariatric operations done and most of the obese will be treated with a medication that would mimic what the surgery does, but in the next five to ten years, the number of people having bariatric surgery is going to keep increasing. As I stated before, only two percent of those who qualify are able to have surgery. I anticipate that by 2013 we would be doing about a million bariatric operations a year from the 200,000 we are doing today.

Dr. Mathias A.L. Fobi, M.D., F.A.C.S.:
Dr. Mathias A.L. Fobi, is an internationally recognized bariatric surgeon, who has changed the shape of Hollywood heavyweights such as Etta James and American Idol’s Randy Jackson. MAL, as he is known among friends, was born in Nkwen, a small village in Cameroon, West Africa. He is a member of the first batch, class of 1965, 0f Sacred Heart College in Mankon Bamenda in Cameroon. He came to the USA through the African Scholarship Program for American Universities (ASPAU) in 1966. This was a scholarship program that was inaugurated by President Kennedy along with the Peace Corps Program.

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• Bariatric Surgery