Bariatric Embolization: A Procedure Dead or Alive?

Obesity is a chronic disease resulting of excess adiposity that over time leads not only to structural and functional abnormalities but also to elevated premature mortality rates as well as an increased comorbidity risk related with the development of more than 200 chronic diseases [1]. Definitively, obesity reduces the quality of life of affected individuals and imposes substantial societal economic costs.

Bariatric arterial embolization (BAE), consisting on left gastric artery embolization, has been proposed as treatment for weight loss based on reducing the blood supply to the fundus of the stomach resulting in a decreased ghrelin release. Ghrelin is, to date, the main hormone known related with the feeling of hunger. Thus, via decreasing ghrelin levels, BAE would lead to relieve hunger and resulting, theoretically, in the patient eatingless and weightloss [2].

CITATION  Cardiovasc Intervent Radiol. 2021 Apr;44(4):607-609. doi: 10.1007/s00270-020-02737-6.  Epub 2021 Jan 27.