Bigger Hospital Beds
In a controversial move, hospitals are purchasing new equipment to help them treat severely obese people.
The negative side is that this equipment is expensive and there's a perception that these people don't "deserve" to have all this money spent on their "self-created" medical problems. And then the plus side is expressed well in the article, which says that "People who might have stayed home for years out of shame now get treatment and equipment built for their needs."
I would hope it's a small minority of people who need specialized equipment. Could these folks be helped by surgical treatment of obesity? Am I naive in thinking that nobody would be happy weighing 500+ pounds? It seems like such a restrictive life.
The negative side is that this equipment is expensive and there's a perception that these people don't "deserve" to have all this money spent on their "self-created" medical problems. And then the plus side is expressed well in the article, which says that "People who might have stayed home for years out of shame now get treatment and equipment built for their needs."
I would hope it's a small minority of people who need specialized equipment. Could these folks be helped by surgical treatment of obesity? Am I naive in thinking that nobody would be happy weighing 500+ pounds? It seems like such a restrictive life.
posted by mo pie at 12:58 PM
2 Comments:
It happens more than you might think. I worked for a large cardiology practice, and we had to buy special equipment for one of our testing cameras. The "table" had a three hundred pound limit... and after putting too many 303 and 306 pound patients on it, the thing bowed until it had to replaced.
We didn't get that many people weighing more than 350 pounds, but we did have one every week or two above the 300 pound mark.
Yes, I can imagine there are quite a few people in a random sample of the population who exceed 300 pounds. I was within 30 pounds of that weight myself at one time, and I never thought of myself as too big for the hospital bed! I'm not sure where I was getting the impression that the weights referred to in the article were much higher than that. I'm actually surprised that the upper limit isn't closer to 350 pounds. Thanks for the info.
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