01/10/2023 – 17:55
Billy Boss/House of Representatives
Deputy Osmar Terra, author of the bill
Legislative Decree 2863/22 makes it mandatory for the Unified Health System (SUS) to provide patients undergoing bariatric surgery with medicines and food supplements for postoperative care.
According to the text, medicines and food supplements will be dispensed according to clinical protocols and therapeutic guidelines approved by the heads of the SUS.
The proposal provides that, until the development of clinical protocols and therapeutic guidelines, the drugs and food supplements listed in the National List of Essential Medicines (Rename) are distributed to patients with obesity undergoing surgical treatment.
The author of the proposal, deputy Osmar Earth (MDB-RS)he points out that SUS provides various formulations and food supplements, from ferrous sulphate, for the treatment of iron deficiency anemia, to highly specific diets for inborn errors of metabolism, but they are not foreseen for the postoperative period of bariatric surgery.
Nutrients
“Furthermore, the most commonly used surgical techniques (such as Roux-en-Y gastric bypass) cause a change in the path that food travels through the digestive system, causing an even greater reduction in the absorption of some nutrients, which occurs particularly in certain regions of the digestive tract,” noted the deputy.
Also according to Terra, as a result of this situation, “many patients undergoing bariatric surgery will need prophylactic or therapeutic replacement of various drugs and food supplements, many of which are low-cost and already available in the SUS, but which are not dispensed to them only for lack of a provision of the law”.
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Reporting – Luiz Gustavo Xavier
Editing – Roberto Seabra
