After surgery, patients get jobs and lose the stigma associated with excess weight.
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Bariatric surgery may have more benefits than originally thought.
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Brooklyn resident Virginia Gomez, now 53, had been unemployed for years. Depressed and always tired, coping with diabetes and other health issues, she had almost given up looking for a job.
But that all changed two years ago when she had weight-loss surgery that resulted in her dropping 70 of her 200 lbs. Not only did her diabetes and other ailments disappear, she found a job.
“With all that weight I was not working because I couldn’t perform,” said Ms. Gomez, who now works as a food preparer for Cater to You Food Service, a Manhattan private school caterer that she says specializes in healthful meals made with local and sustainable ingredients.
According to Dr. Manish Parikh, director of laparoscopic and bariatric surgery at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, where Ms. Gomez had her surgery, the patient’s experience is part of a newly documented trend.
While the health payoff for bariatric surgery and the dramatic weight loss that usually follows is clear, Dr. Parikh and colleagues have found that there is a societal economic benefit as well: many previously unemployed patients get jobs after they lose weight.
The surgery typically costs between $4,000 and $15,000 in New York City, he said, and is covered by Medicaid.
Dr. Parikh, who is also an assistant professor of surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, followed up with 74 patients who had been unemployed when they got bariatric surgery at Bellevue between January 2008 and September 2010. More than 85% of the patients studied were Latin American or African American and 92% were women.
The research team found that 24% of the formerly obese patients had gotten jobs after the surgery, while in a control group of obese patients with similar demographics who came in for consultations but did not get surgery, only 9% had found jobs.
Read More: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110824/FREE/110829954
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