Are Drugs Lowering the Number of Weight Loss Surgeries?
A new study reveals that among privately insured patients with obesity, weight loss drug use has more than doubled. A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6 percent decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity.
The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, is published in JAMA Network Open.
“Our study provides one of the first national estimates of the decline in utilization of bariatric metabolic surgery among privately insured patients corresponding to the rising use of blockbuster GLP-1 RA drugs,” said senior author Thomas C. Tsai, a metabolic bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Excerpted from Technology Networks
