The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), who provide guidance for the NHS and the wider healthcare system in the UK, recently refreshed its evidence-based recommendations on obesity.
NICE now recommends endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) for people with obesity. ESG is a procedure which Dr Rehan Haidry is highly skilled in and has been performing for several years.
In the updated guidance NICE describe ESG as ‘A minimally invasive transoral endoscopic procedure that involves using an endoscopic device to fold the stomach in on itself and stitch it together to reduce its volume. [ESG] reduces the volume of the stomach and may delay gastric emptying. It creates a sensation of fullness and reduces the amount of food that can be eaten at one time.’
NICE recognises that obesity is directly linked to many other chronic and life-threatening diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Weight loss can reduce the risk and severity of these illnesses, helping people to live healthier and longer lives.
NICE recommends ESG for anyone with a BMI over 30 or over 27.5 for people of South Asian, Chinese, other Asian, Middle Eastern, Black African or African-Caribbean ethnicity (as evidence shows a higher incidence of comorbidities, like heart disease, at lower BMIs in these groups).
Procedures like ESG aim to help people to lose weight and to maintain weight loss by restricting the size of the stomach, decreasing the capacity to absorb food, or both. Procedures that reduce the size of the stomach (gastric volume) limit the capacity for food intake by producing a feeling of satiety with a smaller ingested volume of food.
The full updated guidance can be read here: Overview | Endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty for obesity | Guidance | NICE