Lunch Break Fat Op Hope

OVERWEIGHT people could soon receive pioneering treatment – in their lunch hours.

Obese patients currently face surgery on the abdomen, which requires a major incision and can be risky.

But doctors hope to import a scalpel-less procedure from the US which allows doctors to reduce the size of the stomach via the mouth.

The first pioneering treatments, which take about an hour, have been carried out there by gastroenterologists.

They were done with patients asleep under a general anaesthetic.

Doctors hope it will soon be carried out with the patient awake under a local anaesthetic, saving time and money.

Dr Christopher Thompson, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said: “It could eventually be no worse than going down to your local dentist for a filling.

“You could do the operation in your lunch break and be ready to go back to work in a few hours.”

Six in 100 patients die from complications using the current technique.

But Dr Thompson reported no deaths or complications when he carried out the new procedure on 550 patients.

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