Medicare moots changes for bariatric surgery coverage in wake of study
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Medicare officials appear poised to curtail the coverage of gastric bypass procedures for some beneficiaries in the wake of a troubling study, which found that the elderly do not respond as well to the highly-invasive procedure as younger persons do. The study, which appeared in the October 19 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the death rate in the 90 days after surgery was 6.9% for persons aged 65 and older, compared to 2.3% for those under 65.