Fighting Obesity: Surgery or Lifestyle Modification?

An increasingly popular response to morbid obesity affecting both adults and adolescents lies with bariatric surgery—gastric-restrictive and intestinal-bypass procedures. With the widespread public awareness of bariatric surgery, there has been a near explosion in the number of practitioners in the community who perform these operations. Similarly, the number of major academic centers with bariatric surgery programs has dramatically increased in the past several years.

We readily, even enthusias…