Peter N. Benotti

2014

I have had the good fortune to participate in the development of bariatric surgery in the years before 1991, and in the rapid emergence of this intervention as the preferred treatment for extreme obesity. Bariatric surgery, hardly recognized by academic surgical societies as recently as 15 years ago, is now an important service line at most major medical centers, a major focus at academic surgery meetings, and a critical component of the surgical training curriculum in foregut surgery. Bariatric surgery is now widely recognized by medical specialties as a major tool for resolution of obesity-related metabolic derangements, life-threatening disease, and disability related to extreme obesity.