Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog
Los Angeles is awash in billboards and other outdoor signs advertising the weight loss treatment.
One feature of life in Southern California that’s become hard to avoid is the relentless advertising for a weight-loss procedure known as lap-band surgery.
The billboards feature a willowy blond in a red tank top and the phone number 1-800-GET-THIN in huge red letters. “LOSE WEIGHT WITH THE LAP-BAND!” they say.
Read the full story here in the Los Angeles Times
These billboards blanket Southland freeways, 17 on one four-mile stretch of Interstate 5 east of downtown Los Angeles. The ads also appear on the sides of city buses, and there’s a TV spot with a jingle (“Let your newww life begin/Call 1-800-GET-SLIM”).
The ads say the procedure takes an hour, as if you can pop in for a lap-band during your lunch break. In fact, surgically implanting the device requires a general anesthetic and three to four hours of recovery time. Doctors say you can’t resume normal eating for up to six weeks. Nor do the billboards mention the price: $18,000.
The billboards advertise Weight Loss Centers, part of a Beverly Hills medical partnership called TopSurgeons. At least one website associated with TopSurgeons says the entity is “owned and operated” by the brothers Julian and Michael Omidi.
The Iranian-born Omidis built up high-profile practices in dermatology and cosmetic surgery after receiving their medical licenses in 2000 (Julian) and 2003 (Michael). TopSurgeons currently boasts 11 offices staffed by a total of 11 doctors and other professionals, according to the practice’s website.
Today’s press release would have to identify Julian Omidi as a former doctor. His license was revoked in 2009 by the Medical Board of California, which concluded that he had been intentionally deceitful on his license application.
Omidi had failed to mention that he had attended UC Irvine from 1986 to 1990. The board concluded that he did so “most likely” to keep it from learning that he had been expelled from UCI in 1990 for his alleged involvement in the burglary of exam papers. This and other factors led the board to conclude in its June 19 decision that Omidi has “a penchant for dishonesty.”
As for Michael Omidi, the medical board placed him on three years’ probation in 2008 after accusing him of being “grossly negligent” in treating three liposuction patients in 2005. The board said he administered anesthetics improperly and allowed unlicensed assistants to administer anesthetics, suture patients and even once to perform liposuction.
In the right hands the lap-band, also known as a gastric band, is an effective obesity treatment. A silicon ring that constricts the upper part of the stomach, it works by making patients feel full after only a small meal, so they’ll stop eating. One study says patients can take off 50 to 70 pounds over two years.
But medical guidelines endorsed by the National Institutes of Health say the prime candidates for the lap-band are morbidly obese patients, defined as those with a body mass index — a comparison of weight and height — of 40 and above. (A 5-foot-10 person would register a 40 BMI at 279 pounds, or about 100 pounds overweight.) Patients with a BMI of 35 (244 pounds for our 5-10 subject) would be candidates if they also had weight-related conditions such as diabetes.
According to guidelines issued by a medical panel sponsored by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (bariatrics is the branch of medicine concerned with obesity), patients should first try nonsurgical weight-loss programs such as Weight Watchers. “They come to surgery not as the first resort, but the last resort,” according to Dr. Namir Katkhouda, a nationally recognized bariatrics expert at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. Because the surgery carries risks and has long-term lifestyle consequences, “it’s not a cosmetic procedure or a quick fix,” he says.
The guidelines from the metabolic and bariatric surgery group also call for a psychological exam of candidates to screen out those with depression, bulimia or personality disorders that might undermine the treatment. They don’t say anything about people inclined to choose their doctors from a freeway billboard or off the side of a bus, but that’s a new phenomenon and the guidelines were last updated in 2004.
The patient selection principles of TopSurgeons seem to be rather liberal. Its website says it “can help those with a BMI of 27 or greater.” (For our 5-10 patient, that’s a threshold of 188 pounds.)
TopSurgeons says on its website that lap-band surgery can be covered by “most major insurance companies.” Blue Shield and UnitedHealth rely on the 35/40 BMI standard.
For other customers, TopSurgeons offers a different solution: Put the bill on a credit card — specifically the Care Credit card offered by a unit of General Electric Co., which carries an annual interest rate for TopSurgeon patients of 13.9%.
If you or a family member has been injured because of the fault of someone else; by negligence, personal injury, slip and fall, car accident, medical malpractice, trucking accident, drunk driving, dangerous drugs, bad product, toxic injury etc then please contact the Fort Worth Texas Medical Malpractice Attorney Dr. Shezad Malik. For a no obligation, free case analysis, please call 214-390-3189 or Contact Me Online.