Weight loss surgery among teens

The use of surgery to treat obesity has increased greatly among US adolescents, with the number of operations tripling from 2000 to 2003, according to a new study.
The number of young Americans who are obese has skyrocketed in recent decades, and bariatric surgery for weight-loss has emerged as an alternative to diet and behavioural methods.
Researchers at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Brunswick, New Jersey, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre in Ohio tracked the number of people age 10 to 19 who had bariatric surgery.
The figure stayed about the same from 1996 to 2000, but it increased more than three-fold by 2003, a year in which 771 of these operations were performed.
From 1996 to 2003, a total of 2,744 people age 10 to 19 had the surgery, researchers said.