"It's like having a precancerous condition that you can treat rather than waiting till it's cancer," says Jeffrey L. Zitsman, Director of the Center for Adolescent Bariatric Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, in a New York Times article January 8, 2012. Yet despite the prospect of a lifetime of obesity, ostracism, and diseases such as diabetes for such patients, nearly half of pediatricians and family doctors say they would never refer a teenager for obesity surgery.
Full Article: Young, Obese and in Surgery
*Obesity defined as BMI ≥ 95th percentile. Total includes racial and ethnic groups not shown separately. Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007 — 2008.