Bariatric surgery leads to greater weight loss in patients who had a heightened perception of sweetness before surgery, according to a study led by scientists from the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, Portugal. They claim that their study shows, for the first time, that preoperative sweet intensity predicts weight loss after surgery and that post-surgery changes in this variable track the amount of weight loss in each patient.

Dynatronics has introduced a new bariatric stand-in table with motorised patient lift and a laminated H-brace treatment table. The Bariatric Electric Stand-In Table with Patient Lift (Hausmann Model 6177) is a motorised variable-height stand-in table with the ability to lift a 500lb patient from a sitting position to a standing position (this model replaces a previously discontinued model).

Preliminary studies found that more than 14% of patients who were hospitalised with COVID-19 and recovered also were newly diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, indicating there may be a relationship between severe COVID-19 infections and new cases of diabetes.

The International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) has published results of a survey of its members highlighting bariatric medical tourism (BMT) trends worldwide and areas of concern in the care of such patients.

A healthcare cost model study that was designed to estimate the total secondary care costs of patients by body mass index (BM) category - when hospitalised due to COVID‐19 in Europe (during the first wave of the pandemic from January to June 2020) - has reported excess weight contributed disproportionally to the costs of COVID‐19. The outcomes were reported in the paper, ‘Costs of the COVID‐19 pandemic associated with obesity in Europe: A health‐care cost model’, published in Clinical Obesity.