In a recent article, ‘Medical Tourism: “Discharge Planning Safety Checklist” for Safe Follow-Up and Outcomes for Our Patients’, published in Obesity Surgery, Dr Chetan Parmar (Department of Surgery, Whittington Hospital and University College London, London, UK) has proposed a BMT discharge safety checklist to improve the safety of patients that could be easily modified and could be used for different fields of medical tourism.
There has been recent alarm and concern regarding the significant increase in the number of patients travelling abroad for both aesthetic and bariatric surgery resulting in serious complications and sadly, deaths. This increase in ‘bariatric medical tourism’ (BMT) led to the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders, European Chapter (IFSO-EC), the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO), and the European Coalition for People Living with Obesity (ECPO) creating a task force to develop an evidence-based Consensus Statement to address the dangers of bariatric surgery tourism and provide guidelines for patients considering this option.
Using the checklist, Palmer writes that the operating surgeon would be able to provide the details of the preoperative work-up including any risk factors and patients would be able to provide this discharge summary to their general practitioner (GP) in their home country. The checklist would include basic details of the patient, preoperative work-up, operation, postoperative phase, follow-up planning and long-term advice.
It would have a discharge plan provided including that for thromboembolism prevention and patients must be made aware that they can demand this from the surgeons during discharge.
The author suggests the following recommendations:
To share this checklist with different countries performing BMT and medical tourism.
All national and international societies like the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) and its chapters, the European Association for Study of Obesity (EASO), the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), and many more including World Health Organisation (WHO) should endorse this and mandate its use by the hospitals and clinicians.
Raise awareness of this checklist in patients seeking BMT. Patient forums (e.g., Global Obesity Patient Alliance (GOPA), European Coalition for People Living with Obesity (ECPO)) should support in raising awareness and dissemination of this checklist.
Patients should be encouraged to demand this from their surgeons/doctors.
To access this article and the checklist, ‘Medical Tourism: “Discharge Planning Safety Checklist” for Safe Follow-Up and Outcomes for Our Patients’, published in Obesity Surgery, please click here
Comments