Although obesity is a main risk factor for lot of medical diseases like diabetes, high pressure and heart attacks, that can affect the surgical management also in various ways.

Diseases like abdominal wall hernias, deep vein thrombosis, arthritis, etc are more common among obese people.

Obese patients who are undergoing operations are at a higher risk than the normal population to develop surgical and anaesthetic complications. Surgical procedures are difficult and they can develop difficulty in breathing and the wound healing would be poor.

In addition to what have been mentioned, they are more prone to lot of other complications as well.

Therefore it is of utmost importance to control the body weight.
Body mass index(BMI) is a useful indicator of the desired weight.
It is the weight(Kg)/ height(m)2. According to World Health Organization recommendations, BMI of 20-25 is the best. 25-30 is over weight, 30-40 is obese and >40 is morbid obese.
Depending on the category, the risk of all the complications increases.
Therefore all the measures to reduce body weight including dieting and regular exercise are useful to reduce above mentioned surgical complications. So, pay more attention to this aspect than for drugs/pills.

Samira Janaka Jayasinghe