2023-08-29 20:06:00
“The big problem is to make the patient understand that he is ill. He is not a person guilty of being obese but an individual suffering from an illness and as such a treatment path must be followed and accompanied”. Thus Alessandro Giovanelli, head of the National Institute of Obesity Surgery (Inco) at the Irccs Galeazzi Hospital – Sant’Ambrogio, on the occasion of the symposium ‘Communicating obesity’ promoted by Johnson & Johnson MedTech as part of the XXXI Congress of the Italian Society of Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Diseases (Sicob), underway at the Mostra d’Oltremare in Naples.
“This aspect – continued Giovanelli – is often unclear not only to the patient but also to his family members. And when the patient manages to establish within himself the decision to embark on a path, he must find support and not an obstacle in the family”. To tackle obesity, a multidisciplinary approach is crucial. “Being a multifactorial pathology – explained Giovanelli – multidisciplinarity is very important as we have to treat a person and not just the fat tissue so we have to treat him in his psychological, social as well as in his strictly medical aspects because we must not forget that obesity it determines many diseases, from those of the cardiovascular system to those of the respiratory, orthopedic and metabolic systems, and therefore it is a pathology with a strong impact on the individual and on society”.
Obesity, recalled the surgeon, is a “chronic relapsing disease that must be studied, dealt with in a personalized way and which, when it comes to surgery, marks the beginning of a path that requires constant behavior and motivation of the patient. And therefore the multidisciplinary approach lies in good surgery, in a good center that is able to guarantee lifelong follow-up and that the latter is aimed at the medical, nutritional and psychological aspects”, concluded Giovanelli.
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