Bariatric and Gastrointestinal Surgeon
AIS Ambassador to Chile
Obesity and Diabetes Mellitus are a public health problem in Chile. Almost 75% of the population in Chile is overweight or obese.
Chile is the OECD country with the highest obesity rate, the first in Latin America in childhood obesity and 14,000 people die each year from obesity-related diseases.
When comparing the results with the previous national statistics, obesity grew from 22.9 to 31.2% in the last 6 years, while overweight remained at 40%.
Regarding T2DM, the proportion of people older than 15 with DM increased from 4.2% in 2003 to 12.3% in 2017.
Bariatric surgery is the most effective treatment alternative for obesity and current clinical evidence indicates that surgical treatment is superior to medical management in a vast majority of type-2 diabetic patients.
According to data from the Chilean Society of Bariatric Surgery, approximately 8,000 bariatric surgeries are performed annually in Chile, where 64.6% correspond to sleeve gastrectomy and 33.2% to gastric bypass. 6.6% correspond to revision surgery.
Recently the Chilean Societies of Endocrinology and Diabetes and of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery decided to generate a consensus regarding the importance of other factors related to
DM2 that would allow a better selection of candidates for surgery
