Gastric bypass surgery not only helps obese people drop weight and look better, it also helps them live significantly longer, according to two reports published on Wednesday.
The studies in the New England Journal of Medicine confirm what doctors had long suspected but never proved.
The years gained are significant, with life span prolonged by up to 40 per cent and rates of diabetes, cancer and heart disease all lower.
"The question as to whether intentional weight loss improves life span has been answered, and the answer appears to be a resounding yes," Dr George Bray of Louisiana State University wrote in a commentary.
More than 30 per cent of the US population is now considered obese, with severely obese people tending to die five to 20 years earlier than people of healthy weight.
At the same time, more than 100,000 stomach operations of some type are performed in the United States each year to help people lose weight.
One of the studies found that gastric bypass surgery - in which doctors reduce the size of the stomach to limit the amount of food a person can eat - cut the death rate by 40 per cent among 7,925 volunteers who had been followed for an average of seven years.
The risk of heart disease dropped 56 per cent, the diabetes rate was 92 per cent lower and the likelihood of cancer was 60 per cent less compared with 7,925 severely obese people identified by data from their drivers' licences.
But the news was not completely good for the surgery patients.
The chance of death from something other than disease, including accidents, suicide and poisoning, was 58 per cent higher in the surgery group.
Earlier research has shown that obese people who have the operation are more likely to suffer from mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder or the after-effects of childhood sexual abuse.
"After a mean follow-up of 7.1 years, in the surgery group, 171 deaths from disease were prevented per 10,000 operations," Ted Adams of the University of Utah School of Medicine and colleagues wrote in their study.
"On the other hand, there was an increase of 35 non-disease deaths per 10,000 operations, for a net prevention of 136 deaths."
The other study, conducted in Sweden, found that about 11 years after surgery, the death rate was 27 per cent lower among 2,010 patients who had undergone some type of operation, including gastric bypass, to lose weight.
That team, led by Lars Sjostrom of Gothenburg University, found gastric bypass produced the greatest sustained weight loss - about 25 per cent - and that the death rate during the follow-up period was 5 per cent in the surgery group, compared to 6.3 per cent among those who did not have an operation.
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