Bariatric surgery on children and adolescents

Morbid obesity in teenagers has become an increasing problem. Conventional diet has not yet shown effective long-term weight loss. Alternatively, bariatric surgery on adolescents has resulted in substantial weight loss, recovery from diabetes, improvement of cardiovascular risk factors and improvement in psychosocial status. Still, surgery performed on adolescents provides ethical challenges such as the unknown long-term prognosis after surgery. Despite these challenges, in cases of severe intractable obesity or development of life-threatening complications due to obesity, surgery should be considered.