Obesity is one of the most important public health problems worldwide today; it affects around 650 million adults, accounting for 13% of all adults around the world. It has well been acknowledged to be one of the major risk factors for several chronic and potentially life-threatening health conditions.
It directly contributes towards the causation of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and several other types of cancers. The CDC suggests that about 80% of the risk for type 2 diabetes is because of obesity, characterized by insulin resistance, leading to blood sugar levels at their highest peaks. According to the CDC, obesity was central in the early onset of cases for cardiovascular diseases, which include heart disease and stroke, estimating that it accounts for 40% of cases.
Weight loss intervention helps achieve not only weight loss reduction but also health, physical functioning, and quality of life improvement. Such interventions both deal with obesity’s physiological and psychological aspects, helping individuals gain long-term, more permanent health benefits and well-being.
There are three major categories under which weight loss interventions may be classified:
lifestyle modifications, pharmacotherapy, and surgery.
- Lifestyle interventions, which consist of changes in diet and activity level, are the cornerstone of managing weight. The interventions above are not, however, usually of sufficient magnitude for clinically more severe obesity.
- Pharmacotherapy is another adjunct that may be used with management of weight, but its use is limited by side effects, and weight loss is characteristically modest and of short duration.
- Bariatric surgery would be one of the most successful options with a possibility of extreme and long-term weight loss, but it indeed carries risks: complications, infections, bleeding, and possible lifelong nutritional deficiencies.
With these in mind, non-surgical weight loss programs have become heavily promoted, and one of the latest products is Allurion’s ingestible gastric balloon.
Allurion Gastric Balloon
The intragastric balloons have been a minimally invasive surgical intervention for treatment in overweight or obese patients. It is more effective than pharmacological treatments, dietary modifications, and exercises; and thus, it is orally taken where it expands within the stomach to induce early satiety. It will naturally be expelled from the body after four months, hence excluding the surgical implantation, endoscopic procedures, or anesthesia.
This involves the positioning of one or more balloons in the stomach via an endoscopic procedure usually performed under mild sedation in an outpatient clinic. The balloon induces a sensation of fullness and thus reduces caloric intake. Mechanistically, it is hypothesized that the balloon induces the transient phenomenon of early satiety through mechanical restriction of stomach capacity, delayed gastric emptying, and physical obstruction of food intake. Besides, the distension of the gastric walls stimulates the mechanoreceptors that transmit impulses through the vagal nerves to the central nervous system, thereby increasing the sensation of repletion. This mechanical interference does indeed limit meal size significantly, thus making it easier to lose weight.
The intragastric balloon may interfere with neurohumoral factors regulating appetite and gastric motility in multiple ways. It’s supposed action seems to be modulating key hormonal and peptide secretions within the gastrointestinal tract, such as ghrelin, leptin, cholecystokinin, and pancreatic polypeptide—each of them having a direct influence on the regulation of hunger, satiety, and gastric emptying. Therefore, the modulation of these hormone levels by the balloon may therefore facilitate relatively balanced and sustained control over appetite and food intake.
Intragastric Balloon:
Non-surgical
The intragastric balloon represents an alternative in less-invasive therapy for those patients who are either unqualified or unavailable for bariatric surgery. As compared to pharmacologic interventions in weight loss, it seems to be more effective and long-term in handling the issues related to weight, with fewer side effects.
Weight Loss Success:
The balloon has been shown to make its patients lose between 15 and 20 percent of their body weight within several months due to increased satiety and food intake reduction.
- Improved Health Outcome: Besides causing weight loss, the intragastric balloon helps in improving the obesity-related comorbidities that include type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and sleep apnea. Due to better sensitivity to insulin, support rendered by the balloon improves the overall well-being of the body and lowers down blood pressure, often reducing the need for drugs in order to control these diseases.
In addition, the intragastric balloon can be used in a multi-role treatment for obesity. It can be a preventive therapy, metabolic therapy, or even a first line treatment.
Patient characteristics:
Inclusion criteria : Adults aged 18-65 years old, BMI ³27 kg/m², past failure of diet.
Exclusion criteria : For example, pregnant status, past surgeries, dysphagia, GIT cancers, coagulopathies, and medical illnesses such as bowel obstruction or GI motility disorders.
Conclusion
The intragastric balloon appears to be a safe, minimally invasive treatment for weight loss, improving health outcomes and reducing obesity-related comorbidities-particularly in association with lifestyle changes.
