Man who lost 20 stone refused op

T

txsqlchick

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A man who lost 20 stone (127kg) says he has been refused surgery to remove four stone (25kg) of excess skin because he is still considered to be overweight.

Alistair Preston was more than 37 stone (235kg) when he had an operation in 2006 to reduce the size of his stomach.

Mr Preston, 28, of Cardiff, is now around 17 stone (108kg) but has a large amount of excess skin he wants removed.

But in a letter to his GP, Health Commission Wales (HCW) said his body mass index (BMI) was still too high.

Mr Preston, who is 5ft 11in (1.8m) tall, said that to reach the required BMI he would have to weigh 12st 6lb (78kg).

But he said dieticians estimated that four stone of his weight was made up of excess skin and if he was forced to slim down further before surgery took it away, he could be left "seriously underweight".
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BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | South East Wales | Man who lost 20 stone refused op

Wow. Just...wow. If they're going to refuse the op, doing so because he's "still overweight" is BS in my opinion.
 
iLikeMyUserName said:
sounds about right for the NHS.
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Yeah, but the NHS sucks. Basically people aren't getting what they're paying for; it would be different if the NHS considered excess skin removal a cosmetic procedure. They don't, though. To say to this guy that they won't do it because he's overweight...and it's mostly the excess skin that is making him overweight at this point...is bullshit.

Makes me remember why I hate the NHS in the first place!
 
It says his mother paid £10,000 for the gastric bypass.

What I meant when I said 'sounds about right for the NHS' is that it tends to set rediculous rules like this which never benefit the patient - I actually work for the NHS and although I do thinks its good we have such a system availible, it can be so frustrating sometimes when a patient needs a certain type of treatment and they can't have it because of some stupid 'protocol' which MUST be followed under all circumstances.
 
iLikeMyUserName said:
It says his mother paid £10,000 for the gastric bypass.

What I meant when I said 'sounds about right for the NHS' is that it tends to set rediculous rules like this which never benefit the patient - I actually work for the NHS and although I do thinks its good we have such a system availible, it can be so frustrating sometimes when a patient needs a certain type of treatment and they can't have it because of some stupid 'protocol' which MUST be followed under all circumstances.
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My experiences with the NHS and NICE were not good overall; I won't bore you with the details unless you want me to. I thought it was strange how some common over-the-counter medications were banned in the UK, like pyridium (AZO Standard/Uristat). The OTC medicines for UTIs were, frankly, barbaric.

I think the NHS's quality of care falls short of ours by nearly every measure (particularly cancer survival rates), but the NHS does shine in terms of emergency care. If you've been hit by a bus or in the throes of anaphylaxis, the NHS will put you back together just as well as a US hospital will...but you won't get a bill at the end of it.

Basically it's good to have universal access to healthcare, but I would not support an NHS-style system in the USA. Universal access, yes. NHS version 2.0? No way!

ETA: I believe the NHS's problems are pretty much 100% institutional/organizational. Before Thatcher decentralized the NHS and privatized some essential functions (like sanitation), the NHS was far more efficient and was one of the best systems on Earth in terms of value for money and outcomes. There's no reason why it can't go back to that; just put it back the way it was in the 1970s!
 
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