New nonsurgical procedure may be more effective than weight loss drugs, study says
BOSTON - A nonsurgical weight loss procedure may be more effective and less expensive than weight loss drugs like Ozempic.
This is a much less invasive procedure than gastric sleeve surgery. It's called endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty; it removes a portion of the stomach , and it does not involve any surgical cuts.
Instead, a suturing device is passed through the throat into the stomach to stitch the sides of the stomach to make it smaller.
In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital projected that over a 5-year period, the sleeve procedure would be more cost-effective than semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic. Weight loss drugs can be incredibly expensive.
They also projected that about one in five people on the drugs would eventually stop using them for a variety of reasons and would likely regain the weight. With the gastric sleeve procedure, while patients can regain some weight over time, it's usually not all of the weight they lost.
