Yesterday, I hosted my second Bariatric Lunch Forum - available to viewers through the Alberta teleHealth system. This time the topic was obesity surgery. Although my guest, Dr. Shahzeer Karmali was stuck in the OR and only managed to join me during the last 10 mins of the forum, we did cover a lot of ground.
As I’ve blogged before, while the technical advances in surgery are certainly responsible for improving the perioperative outcomes, long-term success is highly dependent on patient selection, patient preparation and long-term follow-up.
Even if the results of obesity surgery are often nothing short of spectacular, it is never an easy way out. Being successful, requires daily diligent hard work - obesity surgery is a tool, not a cure!
Incidentally, yesterday, Sanofi-Aventis announced that after the recent decision of EMEA to suspend the authorisation of the obesity drug rimonabant (CB-1 antagonist), they have decided to discontinue the further development of this compound for all indications and have called off all ongoing clinical trials. In their press release, they base their decision on the fact that “certain national authorities” have made demands that make further development of this drug unfeasible. No doubt, overall, a major setback for the pharmacotherapy of obesity.
AMS
Edmonton, Alberta
In The News
November 7th, 2008 at 8:32 am
[...] After first Merck stopped the development of its CB-1 antagonist taranabant and earlier this week, Sanofi-Aventis abandoned further development of rimonabant , Pfizer yesterday announced, that they too had now [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 9:48 am
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!