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Tony says - loose weight

The interesting question is to how many PCTs will end up refusing to operate on people with a BMI over 30.

The problem is that these decisions are being taken for financial reasons, not medical reasons.

Fat people pay taxes too. The figure of 30 for BMI is an arbitrary figure that is not appropriate for controlling access to waiting lists. There are at times good medical arguments against people being operated on because of their size, but the 3 PCTs I have identified that control things this way do it for primarily financial reasons.

Comments

Stephen Booth said…
PCTs (and you) also miss something I think is a key point. Very often being very overweight (and very underweight for that matter) can be a symptom of an underlying medical or psychological condition. Treatment, including operations, could be someone's only hope of surviving long engough to lose weight.
9:23 pm
John Hemming said…
True, but the essence of my point is that decisions as to who is treated should be on a clinical basis.
7:00 am
Radders said…
BMI can only ever be indicative of a problem. Most olympic rowers have BMIs of 30 to 35.
Therefore the value of 30 as a limit is utterly arbritary.
1:50 pm
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