Gastric band weight loss surgery now being performed on underage teenagers: NewsTarget.com

With the increase in obesity among children, some parents are turning to a relatively unexplored solution with their offspring: stomach stapling.

Stomach surgeries have been around for years, and their popularity has surged among adults in recent years – going from 12,775 to 70,256 surgeries in the U.S. from 1998 to 2002, according to the monthly Archives of Surgery journal. More recently, that number has increased to more than 120,000 a year.

But what about children? In 2004, only 350 kids in America had such an operation, according to federal statistics. Doctors have been hesitant to do the surgeries for several reasons, the main concern being that most stomach surgeries cut the stomach to make it operate as smaller "pouch," which has unknown health risks to a developing child -- the death rate among kids who have the surgery is around 1 in 50, which is twice the death rate among adults who have bariatric surgery.

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Gastric band weight loss surgery now being performed on underage teenagers

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