Teens battle fat with surgery

IPSWICH residents as young as 14 years old are having lap-band procedures as a last resort in their battle with obesity.

Expert obesity surgeon Dr John Copp said lack of exercise and increasingly bad eating habits were to blame for lap-band procedures growing steadily in number over the last decade in Ipswich.

Dr Copp, who has run the Ipswich Obesity Surgi-Centre since 2000, said he expected to perform the procedure about 80 to 100 times this year.

Lap-bands aid weight loss by reducing the capacity of the stomach, which restricts the amount of food that can be consumed.

While the average age of his patients is about 45, Dr Copp said he had given lap-bands to teenagers.

The last resort surgery is not available in the public health system in Ipswich and the procedure costs $17,000 without health insurance.

Dr Copp said surgery was not the first thing people should consider – they had to try dieting, exercise and medication before having a lap-band procedure.

He said while the procedure was effective, it was not a “silver bullet” and after undergoing surgery patients had to follow a healthy dietary regime.

Child obesity expert Dr Abdullah Al Mamun, from the University of Queensland, said there was a number of factors behind the increased obesity rates among children and teenagers.

The School of Population Health researcher said a key factor was whether their parents were also obese.

A Queensland Health survey released in January this year revealed Ipswich was the fattest place in south-east Queensland, with a total of 62.4 per cent of people admitting to being overweight or obese.

– Zane Jackson