Equipment to help control obesity

The doctors of the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM) and the Czech Hospital of Motol have successfully performed a rare surgery to put an electronic device into the gut of obese adolescent patients in order to control this boy's appetite disease.

Czech successful research device to help control obesity

This is the first time a surgery of this type has been successfully performed in the history of Czech health. The device called EndoBarrier was inserted into the upper part of the small intestine, boy Karel Prantl (14 years old).

Obese patients undergo surgery to control the device.(Source: radio.cz)

Due to brain cancer, Karel Prantl had surgery to remove the tumor and perform radiation therapy. However, the inability to completely remove the tumor in the brain has affected the operation of the pituitary gland, making this boy able to eat bluff and drink up to 9 liters of water a day, leading to being overweight. The boy was given medicine to cure thirst, but the medicine did not help the appetite.The EndoBarrier device acts as a barrier to preventing food from being absorbed, reducing digestion time and improving insulin resistance.

Doctor Marek Benes of the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine said the procedure will help this boy reduce at least half of his current body weight and he will eat much less than before. The boy will carry the EndoBarrier device in his body for several months before being taken out by the doctors. Now this boy is healthy and no longer feels the pain as he had suffered before.

This procedure is performed by general anesthesia and the patient can go home 3 hours after surgery. This very promising method actually adds to the list of revolutionary new techniques in the fight against adolescent obesity and diabetes.

Concerning overweight disease in children, recently the Czech organization KOMUNIKUJEME announced the survey results conducted in the framework of the European Union (EU) campaign against child obesity. .

According to the survey results, it is the passive lifestyle, lack of outdoor and sports activities that are one of the causes of obesity. In the Czech Republic, where 17% of children are obese or overweight, 53% of children sitting at the computer have at least 1 hour a day, 30% - from 1 to 3 hours and 17% - from 3 hours or more.