TAMPA, Florida (Orlando Sentinel), September 21, 2005:
With 360 pounds hanging on his 5-foot, 7-inch frame, Robert Stratiff was in sad shape. He had heart problems, poor circulation, wasted knees and sleep apnea that kept him awake most nights. Miserable at age 69, he knew he wasn't long for the world unless he did something drastic. And soon. So in February 2002, the Colonial Heights, Va., resident had gastric-bypass surgery to lose weight, with Medicare picking up the cost. Because he couldn't eat as much, the weight dropped off faster than he could believe. Exercising got easier. Now the retired Army colonel who flew helicopters in Vietnam is down to a svelte 170 pounds and swims a mile in the pool four or five times a week to keep fit. He since has had heart-bypass surgery and a knee rebuilt. All the other medical problems disappeared with the pounds. "I knew I was not going to make it if I didn't have that done," Stratiff, now 73, said of the weight-loss surgery. "My health was on a toboggan anyway, and it would have gone downhill quicker. I wouldn't have lived." Medical advancements are helping Americans live longer, but a fast-food culture and sedentary lifestyles are making us fatter than ever. People who are morbidly obese -- at least 100 pounds overweight -- are increasingly opting for some form of gastric-bypass surgery as a last resort. That includes seniors such as Stratiff who are seeking to improve their health and quality of life for the years they have left. Recent research suggests seniors can benefit from weight-loss surgery as much as younger people and maybe more. One study, from Columbia University's Center for Obesity Surgery in New York, found that patients older than 60 got the same benefits from the surgery and had a comparable rate of postoperative complications as younger people. A soon-to-be published study of 27 gastric-bypass patients 65 and older who had surgery at the University of South Florida and the University of Miami also showed the procedure produced good results and improved quality of life with about the same rate of mortality and complications as seniors who have heart-bypass and hip-replacement surgery. That's a mortality rate of about 2 percent to 4 percent, double the death rate for younger gastric-bypass patients. "We know it corrects the diabetes, it corrects the hypertension, it takes away the sleep apnea, it fixes the heartburn reflux, it makes their knees and joints last longer," said Dr. Michel Murr, a bariatric surgeon at the University of South Florida who has performed nearly 1,000 of the procedures. "All of this is medicine." One of his patients, Sandra Ainbinder of Myakka City near Sarasota, said she weighed a bit more than 400 pounds when she chose to have the surgery last year at age 68. She had lost weight on various diets but always gained it back plus more. She was sick, embarrassed and rarely left the house because she could barely walk. She was rejected by one surgeon because of her age before being accepted by University of South Florida doctors, with Medicare paying for the surgery. "It's not a pleasant thing to go through," Ainbinder said. "It's a serious piece of surgery. If there was any other way to do it, I would have done it. But I felt I had to. I was going to die if I didn't do this." Sixteen months later, Ainbinder is down to 259 and is still losing. Many of her medical conditions either improved or went away. She has more energy and is looking forward to exercising more after knee-replacement surgery. The American Society for Bariatric Surgery, based in Gainesville, said 140,000 people in the United States had some sort of weight-loss surgery last year, most of them gastric bypasses -- reducing the size of the stomach to limit food intake. The number has grown by about 50 percent a year since 1998. By Mitch Stacy, Associated Press
Copyright © 2005, Orlando Sentinel
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