Gastric banding a 'dinosaur technique'

Lap band surgery, which has more than doubled in Australia in under five years, has been branded a "dinosaur" technique in the fight against obesity.

A visiting Swedish obesity expert has questioned Australia's rising use of the technique which, he also said, often did not lead to long-term weight loss.

Gastric banding was seen as a "slowly dying dinosaur" in Sweden, says Professor Stephan Rossner, Director of the Obesity Unit of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

There were 6,000 lap band operations - which uses a band to constrict the upper end of the stomach leading to reduced appetite - in Australia during 2005.

Last year the figure had increased to 14,000.

"In my country, 96 per cent of all obesity surgery is done using an alternative procedure known as a gastric bypass, with close to 90 per cent of these done using a minimally invasive approach," Prof Rossner said.

"Gastric bypass is widely believed to be a much more effective alternative to gastric banding because it leads to long-term weight loss."

A gastric bypass works on the same theory of reducing appetite, but it uses a process of surgically dividing the stomach along with a re-organisation of intestines.

Unlike lap band surgery, it is not easily reversed.

The University of Adelaide is about to embark of a three-year study assessing the merits of different obesity surgeries.

Dr Nam Nguyen, Clinical Senior Lecturer at the university's Discipline of Medicine, agreed that Australia was on its own when it came to rising rates of lap band surgery.

"Everywhere else including Europe and America, gastric bypass is probably the most popular procedure and it's the reverse in Australia," Dr Nguyen said.

"There are pros and cons of both procedures ... but in Australia lap band appeared to be a more popular surgery."

The university has received a $430,000 grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to undertake the work.

This follows the federal government's Preventative Health Task Force recommendation that obesity surgery be offered at Australia's public hospitals.

Prof Rossner was scheduled to give a free public lecture on issues spanning 40 years of obesity prevention and treatment at the University of Adelaide on Monday.