Obesity Surgery Triples Among U.S. Teens

The number of U.S. children having obesity surgery has tripled in recent years, surging at a pace that could mean more than 1,000 such operations this year, new research suggests. While the procedure is still far more common in adults, it appears to be slightly less risky in teens, according to an analysis of data on 12- to 19-year-olds who had obesity surgery from 1996 through 2003.During that time, an estimated 2,744 youngsters nationwide had the operations. The pace tripled between 2000 and 2003, reaching 771 surgeries that year, the study found.Youngsters had slightly shorter hospital stays than adults and none died in the hospital during the study period. By contrast, there were 212 in-hospital deaths out of an estimated 104,702 adults who underwent obesity surgery in 2003, or a rate of 0.2 percent, the study found.Researchers at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center analyzed a database of U.S.