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| Help thin on the ground for obese kids |
28-Jun-2007 |
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By Bianca Nogrady
A SYSTEM-wide failure is leaving the vast majority of overweight and obese children without any form of treatment, an expert says.
As new data show one in four Australian children is overweight or obese, Professor Louise Baur, professor of paediatrics and child health at the University of Sydney, called for regular Medicare-rebated health checks for children and electronic assessment tools for GPs to address the crisis.
Most overweight and obese children were not being identified, diagnosed or managed, Professor Baur told a Healthy Lifestyle Forum in Canberra last week.
“For every 200 children who go to a GP, 60 are overweight or obese and only one gets offered therapy,” she said, while acknow-ledging the issue could be difficult to raise with parents.
“Families need to recognise that it is appropriate for GPs to weigh and measure children and raise issues about healthy lifestyle,” Professor Baur told Australian Doctor.
The absence of an established model of care for management of overweight and obese children was also an issue, she said.
First-line treatment would be lifestyle interventions, but the addition of medications, such as orlistat and sibutramine, or surgical intervention, had been shown to be effective in some young people, Professor Baur said.
Meanwhile, a study examining cardiovascular effects of sibutramine in obese adolescents found the treatment led to more than a 10% drop in BMI in more than one-third of patients. In patients receiving placebo, only 5.5% experienced a similar improvement.
Smaller decreases in blood pressure and heart rate were found in the treatment group compared with placebo, suggesting the drug did have some cardiovascular effects but that they were balanced by a reduction in BMI.
Pediatrics 2007; 120:e147-57.
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