Obesity is an American epidemic. In testimony before the Congress in 2003, the U.S Surgeon General said:

“The crisis is obesity. It’s the fastest-growing cause of disease and death in America. And it’s completely preventable.

• Nearly two out of every three Americans are overweight or obese.
  
  
• One out of every eight deaths in America is caused by an illness directly related to overweight and obesity.”

determination of height and weight (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/). Calculator charts are available on the internet, which will allow you to determine BMI and define whether you are obese or morbidly so.

The concern about obesity and its relation to a host of co-morbid medical conditions has led to the recognition that diet and exercise do not provide a cure. It appears that surgical intervention is the only realistic cure. By either reducing the size of the stomach to a miniscule pouch, bypassing most of the absorptive surface of the small intestine, or a combination of both appears to successfully allow massive weight loss in the very obese and morbidly obese individual. These advances have led to a immense increase in bariatric surgery, and, with it, a vast increase in post-bariatric plastic surgery. While bariatric (weight loss) surgery has been around since the 1950’s, it has only recently come into its own as a sub-specialty of general surgery (American Society for Bariatric Surgery ; American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery  www.ASBS.org). This is due not only to the rise in the incidence of serious obesity but also to a number of revolutionary advances in surgery, particularly laparoscopic or minimally invasive surgery, as well as the refinement of prior surgical techniques and the development of new ones. It has been a god-send to the morbidly obese patient who was unable to lose significant weight by diet and exercise.

Following bypass surgery and the weight loss that follows, patients are left with enormous amounts of skin and soft-tissue excess that needs to be tailored just like a suit of clothes after weight loss. For each bariatric patient there are multiple plastic surgery procedures that need to be performed, transforming the patient from head to toe. These surgeries include: facelifts, breast reduction and lift, abdominoplasty, upper and lower body lifts, thigh and knee lifts. Even for the morbidly obese who do not choose the route of bariatric surgery, there are procedures to help shape and tailor their tissues making life and hygiene better and simpler including liposuction, belt lipectomy, and panniculectomy.