Southampton Gets New Weightloss Surgery

Bariatric surgeons in Southampton are going to become the first team in Europe to offer a new incisionless weight loss procedure to decrease the capacity of a patient's stomach.

 Private patients who meet set criteria can become among the first in the country to benefit from this new technology called POSE (Primary Obesity Surgery, Endoscopic).POSE is the first incisionless surgery for obesity to be offered in the UK and will be launched privately in Southampton this summer. With this new private procedure available to patients with a BMI of 30-40 this may widen the availability of bariatric surgery options to those patients who do not meet NHS requirements and who may have struggled with controlling their weight through diet and exercise.

While surgeons have performed many different kinds of operations to help patients lose weight, this is the first procedure of its kind to be done without having to cut into the abdomen to reach the stomach. Incisionless surgery may offer a number of benefits including less pain, a shorter hospital stay, a faster return to normal activities and no scarring.

Adam Power from the company behind the introduction of this procedure to the UK, said: "The tools that make up the IOP (Incisionless Operating Platform) received the CE Mark in March of this year for launch in Europe. We take pride in bringing this leading and forward thinking technology to the UK and are confident that we will see successful results in Southampton. Patients will see for themselves that a Friday surgery can mean they are back at work come Monday morning, unheard of with previous types of weight loss procedures."

The U.K. is the third most obese nation by percentage of the population with an estimated 23% of the U.K. population obese. Southampton's statistics reveal that, 'one in four' adults in the area are obese. Several serious diseases and conditions are commonly associated with obesity, including Type II diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnoea and cardiovascular disease. Surgical treatment of obesity has increased significantly in recent years.

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