Olympus Applauds Obesity Bill of Rights Initiative

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., (March 19, 2024) – Olympus, a leading global medtech company providing innovative solutions for medical and surgical procedures, announced today it applauds the new Obesity Bill of Rights.

Olympus will support the initiative by working to build awareness and talking to its healthcare customers about this important campaign to counter bias and ageism in obesity care. The program, spearheaded in January 2024 in the U.S. by the National Consumers League (NCL), a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, in conjunction with the National Council on Aging (NCOA), establishes a set of rights to “assure screening, diagnosis, counseling and effective treatment based on medical treatment guidelines.” This ongoing effort to gather support is expected to culminate in a fully implemented Bill of Rights by Dec. 31, 2029. The NCL and NCOA are working at the grassroots, employer, state and federal levels on this effort to ensure equal access to care for all obesity patients.

NCL and NCOA worked with health leaders and obesity specialists to draft these Bill of Rights tenets that are intended to change the narrative, such that the healthcare industry more effectively sees obesity as a treatable chronic disease that can be treated with the same “respect, attention and medical care” as other chronic conditions.

Statistics regarding obesity are staggering:

  • 108M people in the U.S. are considered obese, only 10% of whom get help from medical professionals and only 2% of whom are treated with new medications.
  • More than 230 conditions are worsened by obesity.
  • Obesity is connected to $1.73 trillion in annual medical costs in the U.S.
  • 400K premature deaths annually are linked to obesity.1

“Olympus provides equipment to the surgical community that helps in the treatment of obesity, and statistics show that not enough people have access to this type of treatment,” said Paul Skodny, Executive Director for Health Economics and Market Access at Olympus Corporation. “It is our hope that awareness of treatment options and equitable access and insurance coverage will help address the detrimental health impacts of obesity.”

Bariatric Surgery as a Solution for Weight Loss
Because of recent pharmaceuticals’ entry into the market, such as semaglutide-based medications, obesity treatment has been receiving more attention. Surgical treatment which can complement medical management, has a lengthy track record, having been available to patients for decades with favorable long-term outcomes.2 Studies show patients typically lose the most weight one to two years after bariatric surgery and see substantial improvements in obesity-related conditions.

Despite the growing number of obesity-related health problems, fewer than 2% of those eligible for bariatric surgery elect to have it.3 Given these statistics, Olympus, maker of technologies for performing minimally invasive bariatric procedures, sought to understand the awareness level and concerns of eligible patients in a survey conducted in 20194:

  • Marginal Awareness around Benefits: A little more than 50% of respondents demonstrated only marginal awareness that bariatric surgery causes hormonal changes that improve weight loss by maintaining or enhancing energy expenditure.5
  • Worry about Gaining Weight Back: 20% of respondents were avoiding bariatric surgery because of concerns about surgery complications and gaining the weight back.
  • Awareness around Insurance Opportunities: 56% of respondents were aware that insurance covers bariatric surgery in most qualified cases.6

Surgical benefits are real and should be known to more patients. Studies show that:

  • Patients may lose as much as 60% of excess weight six months after surgery, and 77% of excess weight as early as 12 months after surgery. On average, five years after surgery, patients maintain 50% of their excess weight loss.1
  • The majority of bariatric surgery patients with diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and obstructive sleep apnea experience remission of these obesity-related diseases.1

Statistically, the risk of death during weight-loss surgery procedures is less than 1 percent. All abdominal operations carry the risks of bleeding, infection in the incision, thrombophlebitis of legs (blood clots), lung problems (pneumonia, pulmonary embolisms), strokes or heart attacks, anesthetic complications and blockage or obstruction of the intestine. These risks are greater in patients with severe obesity.7

To learn more about Olympus’ state-of-the-art technologies for performing minimally invasive bariatric surgeries, visit the Bariatrics product page.

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About Olympus
At Olympus, we are committed to our purpose of making people’s lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling. As a global medical technology company, we partner with healthcare professionals striving to provide best-in-class solutions and services for early detection, diagnosis and minimally invasive treatment, aiming to improve patient outcomes by elevating the standard of care in targeted disease states.

For more than 100 years, Olympus has pursued a goal of contributing to society by producing products designed with the purpose of delivering optimal outcomes for its customers around the world. For more information, visit medical.olympusamerica.com.

1 Americans now have an Obesity Bill of Rights. NCLnet.org. https://nclnet.org/americans-now-have-an-obesity-bill-of-rights. Published January 31, 2024. Accessed February 29, 2024.

2 Story of Obesity Surgery. asmbs.org. https://asmbs.org/resources/story-of-obesity-surgery/#:~:text=The%20first%20operations%20designed%20solely,at%20the%20University%20of%20Minnesota. Published 2023. Accessed February 29, 2024.

3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7474975/. February 27, 2020. Accessed February 29, 2024.

4 The Olympus-commissioned online survey was conducted mid-December 2019.

5 Public Education Committee. Benefits of Bariatric Surgery: ASMBS. American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. https://asmbs.org/patients/benefits-of-metabolic-and-bariatric-surgery. Accessed February 29, 2024.

6 Manning S. How to get your health insurer to pay for your weight-loss surgery. Insure.com. https://www.insure.com/health-insurance/weight-loss-surgery.html. Published September 24, 2020. Accessed February 29, 2024.

7 Available Procedures. Yale New Haven Health. https://www.ynhh.org/services/bariatric-surgery/procedures. Accessed March 15, 2024.