Dubai: More than 20 per cent of the UAE population is obese and an additional 60 per cent overweight, with 19 per cent having diabetes. In such circumstances, minimally invasive bariatric surgery is gaining popularity as it not only reduces obesity but also cuts down the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Ahead of launching a department of Minimal Access, Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, Prime Hospital, a major health-care provider in the UAE, announced the hosting of an international meeting on surgical gastroenterology, Gastrosurg 2015, at a media roundtable on the topic. The conference will have international gastroenterology experts and bariatric surgeons presenting their keynote addresses and also discussing organ transplant.

Prime Hospital has an agreement with Rashid Hospital, whose doctors conduct bariatric surgeries at Prime Hospital. Since the government doctors are conducting surgeries, the compliance with government rules and screening of patients according to the eligibility of patients is observed.

Dr Jameel Ahmad, Director of Prime Hospital, said at the media roundtable: “Bariatric surgery, which was considered to be of cosmetic value earlier, is much more as it definitely holds therapeutic value for obese patients, reducing the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Patients from the UAE are already travelling from here to countries abroad for these surgeries. With the government’s implementation of a medical tourism programme, more than 500,000 medical tourists are expected by 2020 and we anticipate a huge surge in patients for bariatric surgery. This scientific conference will instil confidence in people and give them access to new scar-less procedures in this field.”

Drawing attention to the dramatic results of surgeries like sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass, two minimally invasive surgeries, Dr Vinod Kumar Singhal, surgical gastrotenterologist at Prime Hospital, said: “These two surgeries are accepted worldwide as the gold standard in bariatric surgeries for weight reduction and also treat other co-morbidities such as diabetes, osteoarthritis, blood pressure and other complications, vastly improving the quality of life. Gastric bypass surgery has shown that in Type II diabetes where patients require insulin injections, the requirement of insulin has gone down to a minimum and in those dependent on oral diabetic medication, Type II diabetes has disappeared altogether.”

Dr Riaz Khan, general manager of the hospital, said: “Studies have proved that bariatric surgery, which was considered high risk until a few decades back, is no longer so. Its complication and fatality rates are much lower than that of cardiovascular surgery.”

Prime Hospital plans to have a peer panel of seven international surgeons to enhance the skills of the surgeon and the multidisciplinary team.