Understanding the Growing Impacts of Obesity on Patient Outcomes and Care Delivery

Announcer:
You’re listening to Clinician’s Roundtable on ReachMD. On this episode, Dr. Sujith Cherian will discuss the rising prevalence and clinical impacts of obesity. Dr. Cherian is an Associate Professor in the Divisions of Critical Care, Pulmonary, and Sleep Medicine at University of Texas Health-McGovern Medical School. He also serves as the Director of Interventional Pulmonology and Pleural Diseases at Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston. Let’s hear from Dr. Cherian now.

Dr. Cherian:
Obesity is a significant health problem, and the effects are on several systems. There is an increased risk of coronary artery disease, increased risk of venous clots, and increased risk of infections, particularly viral infections. And then heart dysfunction as well.

To add to that, the obesity prevalence right now is 40 percent. This is higher in the age group of 40 to 59, which is in the range of 46 percent. And if you look at the incidence of severe obesity, that compared to the last decade has gone up from 7 percent to close to 10 percent across both populations. And in women it’s actually all the way up to 12 percent.

With the way things are going right now, the expected obesity incidence is likely to be from currently two out of five to at least one out of two by 2030. And if you look at overweight plus obesity, four out of five people are going to have this by 2030. These are all mind-blowing numbers, and while we talk about the effects that it has on certain disease states, you also have to think that when obese patients are admitted, there is an increased challenge or difficulty in care, both for the patient as well as for the staff taking care of them, which all contributes to increased length of stay as well as hospitalization. This includes difficulties with patient positioning, transport, skin care, intravascular access, diagnostic imaging, and ventilator weaning.

And then as far as medications, underdosing because of improper calculations based on the weight as well as overdosing while the patients are on a maintenance medication are also significant issues. And in terms of infections, if you look at BMI greater than 40, the risk of a surgical site infection is at least six times higher.

There are multiple tools right now to help decrease the weight in addition to diet, but physical exercise and diet are probably the most important things that we have. And these small changes make a big impact.

Announcer:
That was Dr. Sujith Cherian discussing the real-world impacts of increasing obesity rates. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Clinician’s Roundtable on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!