The concept of smaller, thinner laparoscopic tools has been an idealized, but unrealized prospect for many years since the advent of laparoscopic surgery. Some prominent manufacturers of surgical instruments have created micro-laparoscopic instruments in the past, but they did not perform to the standard that bariatric surgeons require.

The most common complaints were how the extremely thin instruments would bend under the stress of the patient’s fat and muscle tissue. However the advent of more resilient titanium and ceramic combinations has finally made micro-laparoscopic surgery possible, and select surgeons, such as Los Angeles’s Dr. Michael Feiz and Dr. Monali Misra, are starting to provide this innovative micro-lap surgery for eligible patients.

The American Society of Bariatric Physicians (ASBP) does not support the concept that state intervention to remove a child from his or her home is the proper way to address life threatening cases of childhood obesity. Comprised of physicians involved in the frontline clinical treatment of obesity, the ASBP believes that in most cases this type of state intervention is extreme and unjustified.

With approximately one out of three children in America considered overweight or obese, it is clear that childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions. Since the CDC began tracking childhood obesity data in the mid 1970s, and despite millions of dollars spent on various campaigns and research efforts, childhood obesity rates have continued to rise. ASBP does not attribute this dramatic increase solely to poor parenting.