'Danny's Place' is a South Australian institute established specifically for provision of integrated obesity services to severely obese children between the ages of 10-18 years. Diet and behaviour/lifestyle modification is in the form of a six month 'Be Your Best' (BYB) programme which is also compulsory for all patients referred for bariatric surgery. The aim of this study is to report the early experience of 'Danny's Place' in provision of tertiary level care for childhood obesity.
Materials and methods:
All 34 children (aged 9.5-17.8yrs, 20 females) presenting to Danny's Place between 01/03/2016 and 30/052017 for weight management were included in the study, and grouped as below:
prospectively collected data (demographic, anthropometric, body composition, clinical and laboratory) was analysed.
Results:
The mean (± SD) BMI centile for the three groups of children (bariatric, BYB, non BYB) was 99.33 (±0.29), 98.63(±1.63) and 97.63 (±2.64) respectively. The mean (± SD) BMI z score for the same three groups was 2.81 (±0.33), 2.42 (±0.43) and 2.16 (±0.47) respectively.
3/5 adolescents in group1 have successfully undergone (lap band surgery (n=1), or sleeve gastrectomy (n=2); (current mean BMI loss= 10.5)
1/16 in group 2 has so far failed to engage with the BYB programme. Four other patients in group 2 have not shown satisfactory weight loss (≥1 BMI unit). The mean(± SD) BMI loss in the remaining 7/16 patients who have completed 6 months of the BYB programme is 2.93 ((± 1.6).
Conclusions:
This early data suggests that integrated tertiary level services for childhood obesity can be effectively provided at a community level.