Lap Band Surgery and Obesity Make the Courts
Lap Band weight loss surgery has been so well received by Americans that it was only a matter of time until the procedure became involved in court cases.
An Indiana Court of Appeals declared that a six-foot-tall, 380-pound man must have a Lap Band to lose enough weight to make sure a separate back operation would be successful. (Learn more about the Lap Band case.)
The 25-year-old plaintiff and pizza worker was accidently hit in the back by a freezer door at work in 2007. At the time, he weighed 340 pounds.
The man repeatedly saw Lap Band doctors and other physicians who found he needed a back operation to relieve shooting pains. But first, the doctors declared, the man must lose weight or the operation would not work.
But the Pizza company objected.
A first trial found that the pizza firm must cover the costs of the weight loss surgery as well as the back injury but the pizza owners appealed.
The Court of Appeals agreed and ordered the company to supply the Lap Band.
Hopefully, somebody will tell the pizza worker that having a Lap Band still requires the patient to do some work, make some efforts and life style adjustment, including job choice.
In a separate obesity case in South Carolina, a 14-year-old boy who weighs 555 pounds was taken from his mother and placed in foster care. The South Carolina Department of Social Services charged the boy’s mother was neglectful of lad’s medical care.
Last June, the mother took her son to Maryland but later had to face charges of criminal neglect for allowing the boy to become morbidly obese.
During the trial, the mother said the boy’s eating was totally out of control while he, the 14-year-old, was at school where he ate what he wanted, when he wanted.
Watch a Weight Loss Channel video about the obese teen.
Two states – California and Indiana – include morbid obesity within the definition of medical neglect. And, according to the Weight Loss Channel, three other states are looking closely at the South Carolina court case.
Perhaps it should be more widely known that teens can, and do, have Lap Bands.
Of the hundreds of Lap Band blogs, many are about teens.
We’ve included one touching tale here, about a five-foot-five 12-year-old girl who tipped the scales at 290 pounds before her Lap Band surgery.
admin @ August 19, 2009
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