Going under the knife to lose weight can boost earnings, leaving patients slimmer and better off, official data suggests.
Analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found men who had bariatric surgery saw a whopping £200-a-month pay rise, on average, five years after the op.
Women saw more modest financial benefits, getting just £55 a month more.
Both men and women were also more likely to be employed in general, with a four percentage point rise in having a job after losing their love handles.
ONS analysis suggested the results were likely a result of those who had weight loss surgery being fit enough to find work rather than being paid more by their bosses.
Analysis by the Office for National Statistics ( ONS ) found Brits in England who underwent bariatric surgery, such as gastric bypasses, on the NHS saw the significant boost to their pay checks five years after the operation
The wage spiked peaked at £84 five years after going under the knife but results started far sooner, with a £3.50 average spike in monthly pay recorded from the sixth month and increasing from there
Brits who underwent the operations earning more, they were also more likely to be employed in general, with a 4.3 percentage point rise in having a job after losing their love handles
It highlighted how a subsection of the study, that only looked at Brits who had surgery while already in paid employment, saw a far lower increase in pay in the same period, taking home only an extra £17 per month.
ONS analysts also found that monthly wages did dip immediately following surgery, decreasing by an average of £117.
This is presumably from people being unable to work during the four-to-six month recovery.
Overall, when figures for men and women were combined, people were £84 better off five years after having weight loss operations.
The ONS’s analysis was based on over 40,000 Brits who had bariatric surgery on the NHS between April 2014 and December 2022.
Bariatric surgery, commonly known as weight loss surgery, consists of a variety of potential procedures including gastric sleeves, gastric bypass and gastric band . This illustrated example shows a gastric bypass
Bariatric surgery, commonly known as weight loss surgery, consists of a variety of potential procedures.
These include gastric sleeves, gastric bypass or gastric band procedures.
While all differ slightly the basic principle is they alter the shape of the stomach either by cutting sections of the organ away or tightening it with an artificial material.
The end result is that the stomach becomes smaller making a person feel fuller sooner.
This helps them reduce the amount they eat, and by extension, lose weight.
It’s not to be confused with liposuction, a primarily cosmetic op that removes fat from parts of the body but doesn’t help people lose weight in the future.
Bariatric surgery is only available on the NHS for Brits who are severely obese, typically those with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher.
Such patients will also needed to have tried to lose weight through diet exercise and medication before being eligible.
Bariatric surgery is available privately for patients that don’t meet these criteria, but such operations can cost about £15,000 depending on the specific type.
There have been increasing concerns that patients ineligible for the op on the NHS are seeking cheaper alternatives abroad with sometimes disastrous consequences.
Around 5,000 people a year go overseas for obesity surgery, but British surgeons have repeatedly warned the NHS is being left to ‘pick up the pieces’.
They say many patients are returning with serious infections resulting from the lower standards of some foreign clinics.
Your browser does not support iframes.
Treating these preventable cases is fuelling delays for routine care, such as hip and knee replacements, as they take up limited hospital beds and surgical capacity.
Bariatric surgery, like any major op, comes with a host of potential complications.
These include standard complications like blood clots and infections but also unique ones like a blocked gut or stomach contents leaking into the rest of the body.
The ONS analysis comes as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has taken a keen interest in tackling the nation’s obesity epidemic to get overweight Brits back to work.
These controversial plans don’t involve surgery however, instead health secretary Wes Streeting has proposed using fat-busting jabs similar to Ozempic as a pharmaceutical solution to help ease burden on the NHS and boost the economy.
Weight-related illness costs the economy £74billion a year, with people who are overweight at increased risk of heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
However NHS chiefs have privately warned the plan risks overwhelming an already stretched service.
