Possible Weight-Loss Tool: Blocking Stomach Artery
Experimental procedure tested in 4 morbidly obese patients so far
The procedure, called gastric artery embolization, is usually employed as a nonsurgical way of stemming blood loss by blocking (embolizing) a principle blood pathway.
Doctors inject microscopic beads into the bloodstream. Normal blood flow then carries them into the arterial region, where blockage occurs.
The technique is not approved for weight loss. But under an "investigational device exemption," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted permission for a five-patient pilot study to see if the procedure could curtail blood flow to the stomach and thereby suppress production of the "hunger hormone" ghrelin.
Elevated levels of ghrelin can keep people from sticking with a diet, the researchers explained.
"It seems promising, and we think there is huge potential," said study lead author Dr. Mubin Syed, an interventional radiologist with Dayton Interventional Radiology in Dayton, Ohio.
However, it's still too early to know how well this experimental approach to weight loss will work, Syed added.
"For now, bariatric [weight-loss] surgery is still the standard treatment approach for obese patients for whom diet and exercise alone is not enough," Syed said.
Syed and his colleagues were scheduled to present their findings Tuesday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This puts them at risk of other serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Although gastric bypass surgery has a reliable track-record, Syed said there is a need for a nonsurgical alternative given that there's always some risk for complications with invasive surgery. "Problems occur in about 10 percent of cases, and so some patients are reluctant to have the [weight-loss] surgery, even when nothing else has worked," he said.