Higher-Than-Expected Suicide Rate Following Bariatric Surgery

Just when you (stupidly) thought it was safe.

"Extremely obese Pennsylvania residents undergoing weight loss surgery over a 10-year period had a higher-than-expected mortality rate from suicide, according to a new study appearing in the October issue of Archives of Surgery. The study also uncovered an excess of deaths due to coronary heart disease among these surgery patients."

It is of some note that "therapeutic complications" are considered "natural deaths." As if dying from the cure is natural. You just gotta love sick care.

"Therapeutic complications accounted for 38 of 150 natural deaths within 30 days, including pulmonary embolism in 31 (20.7%), coronary heart disease in 26 (17.3%), and sepsis in 17 (11.3%)."

For some, it is dead if you do and dead if you don't:

"There were 16 deaths listed as suicides, but the actual suicide rate was likely higher, since some of the 14 deaths listed as drug overdoses on death certificates may have been suicides as well. Based on statistics for the general US population, only 2 suicides would have been expected in this number of people. 'There was a substantial excess of suicide deaths, even excluding those listed only as drug overdose,' the authors write."

Apparently addiction to food was replaced with an addiction to drugs.

Here is the counterpoint:

"However, the deaths in the study should be viewed in context, said Dr. Courcoulas who, as an epidemiologist, says she is familiar with studies such as this one and their limitations. She noted that it might not be so much the surgery that is killing these patients but their obesity."

Excuse me, but wasn't preventing death from obesity why the surgery was done?