The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given its OK to a new treatment for those who are severely overweight, according to this news service story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Lap-Band Adjustable Gastric Banding System is a device that's implanted inside the patient and then tightened around the stomach.
By inflating the banding system, doctors can control the amount of food a severely obese patient can take into his or her stomach. The FDA defines severely obese people as those more than 100 pounds overweight or double their ideal weight. The treatment is only intended as a last resort, the story says.
For more on the device, visit the Web site of its maker, BioEnterics Corp.
For more information on losing weight, check out the National Institutes of Health.
