Imperial Weight Centre

Obesity is associated with a number of co-morbidities such as Diabetes, sleep apnoea and cardiac disease. All of these affect quality of life and life span. In order to maximise the benefits, before start of bariatric treatment, all patients must be assessed and treated for any existing co-morbidities. Presence of certain co-morbidities may influence our choice of bariatric treatment. Failure to detect co-existing illnesses can have a significant negative effect on the outcome of bariatric treatments, especially surgery. All patients coming into our centre are reviewed by a physician for precisely this reason. The full resources of the hospitals affiliated to the Imperial are available to us for the further investigation of our patients, if deemed necessary. Some of the services of particular relevance to our bariatric patients are nutrition, Endocrinology and Diabetes, cardiology, sleep study centre, radiology and pathology.

Bariatric surgery is currently the most efficacious treatment for morbid obesity and has arguably the best long term outcomes. Our Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery Unit complements our weight reduction-lifestyle and weight reduction-pharmacotherapy clinics already in place at Charing Cross Hospital. Mr Ahmed R Ahmed has had extensive Fellowship level training in the field of Bariatric Surgery from the United States. He has performed over 400 bariatric procedures. Mr Krishna Moorthy is an upper gastrointestinal cancer surgeon.

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On average 8-12 bariatric surgeries are performed per week. The surgeons provide a separate on-call cover for bariatric surgery emergencies and are available 24 hours. We offer laparoscopic gastric bypass, gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy, BPD-duodenal switch and revisional surgery. Our current duration of hospital stay rates are same day / overnight stay for gastric band, 2 nights for gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomies. We have had a successful visit from the South East Bariatric Commissioning panel and in July 2009 achieved ‘Centre of Excellence’ status with the American Surgical Review Corporation.

At present, we offer a once a week new patient and follow up clinic. Our clinics are run concurrently in order to offer patients a convenient ‘one-stop’ clinic. All patients are encouraged to attend a Group Seminar where they meet other patients interested in obesity management as well as patients who have previously undergone surgery. In keeping with our multidisciplinary approach, all patients coming into clinic are discussed in a weekly multidisciplinary meeting. This allows all the relevant health professionals to have a complete understanding of the patient’s situation before any treatment decisions are made. Our experience has shown that this approach leads to a significantly better patient outcome.