But precisely because of the corona pandemic, those treatments cannot continue. Because non-critical care has been scaled down, people are put on a waiting list. It now lists 2,000 obese people, and hundreds more every month.
The gastric reduction operations cannot continue because there is a very small chance that someone will end up in intensive care afterwards. “That chance is 1 in 1000, but that turns out to be enough to cancel the operations,” says Kobus Dijkhorst, director of the Dutch Obesity Clinic in the Netherlands. NOS Radio 1 News.
The numbers
In the Netherlands, half of adults are overweight (BMI of 25 or higher). It is more common in men than women and more common in people over 50 than young people. Sun 14 percent is seriously overweight, or obese (BMI of 30 or higher).
Of the corona patients in the ICU, 80 percent are overweight and 40 percent obese, according to figures from the National Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE). The group is thus overrepresented in the ICs.
About 12,000 gastric reduction operations are performed annually, roughly half of which are performed by the Dutch Obesity Clinic.
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