Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? 

Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | New York Post
Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | New York Post

United States: New data highlight a reduction in the number of people opting to undergo bariatric surgery procedures while more Americans rely on the GLP-1 medications Wegovy and Zepbound for a slimmer waistline. 

New data shows that prescriptions of this GLP-1 class of diabetes and weight-loss medications increased to 2023-2022, more than doubling. 

As reported by HealthDay, there was however a 25.6% decline in the number of patients receiving metabolic bariatric surgery, according to a team from the Harvard Medical School in Boston led by Dr. Thomas Tsai. 

Full approval of Wegovy, the first GLP-1 medicine for weight loss, by the US Food and Drug Administration in mid-2021 has resulted in a sharp increase in sales of Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. 

Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | Adobe Stock
Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | Adobe Stock

Suddenly, the substances have been associated with weight loss, which in part how they operate, by causing individuals to experience satiety sooner than they would otherwise. 

Before the development of GLP-1s, the only known ways were diet and exercise for the obese Americans or bariatric surgeries. But the “Ozempic era” may have altered all that, according to Tsai’s team. 

‘For example, health systems have anecdotally shut down hospital-based MBS programs due to reduced demand,’ they pointed out in the background to the study. 

To arrive at harder numbers, the researchers followed figures from more than 17 million people for whom medical insurance was through private insurance or Medicare Advantage. The subjects were 80 patients with no previous history of diabetes, but all the patients had obesity. 

They examined the prescription pattern of GLP-1 meds for weight loss for the last six months of 2022 and for the last six months of 2023. 

Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | Adobe Stock
Why Are Fewer People Choosing Weight Loss Surgery? Credit | Adobe Stock

They also examined the patterns of weight-loss surgeries in these time spans.As prescription use of GLP-1 meds went up by 132.6% between 2022 and 2023, the bariatric surgery rates went down by 25.6%, according to the team. 

Tsai and the colleagues note that even though all the meds like Wegovy and Zepbound are effective in helping people shed pounds and the drugs high cost and the high rates of the gastrointestinal adverse effects can lead to the treatment cessation and subsequent weight regain.” 

Also, here the demand for the weight loss meds has also outstripped supply so make it possible that the number of the weight-loss surgery patients may rise again if ongoing national shortages of GLP-1s continue the research team added. 

In the meantime, all the policy makers and the clinicians should continue to closely monitor trade-offs between the pharmacologic and the surgical management of the obesity treatment.” Tsai’s group said.