A recent study suggests that weight loss surgery does not necessarily decrease the morbidity rate among morbidly obese middle-aged adults.

The United States researchers studied 850 male morbidly obese patients who went through weight loss surgeries or more commonly called as bariatric surgery between the years 2000 and 2006. The average age of these people is 49.5 and their average BMI is 54.7. A BMI or Body Mass Index more than 40 is already considered morbidly or severely obese.

The death rate of these people are compared to a group of males with an average age of 54.7 and an average BMI of 42 who did not undergo weight loss surgery. Eleven or 1.29 percent of those who underwent weight loss surgery died just within a month after their surgeries.

Matthew Maciejewski said that upon initial analysis they found out that the group who underwent weight loss surgeries has a lower death rate compared to the group that did not have surgery. After further analysis, however, the researchers realized that weight loss surgery does not have a direct effect on the death rate of morbidly obese patients.

The study was published online and will be published in print in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researcher, however, emphasized that many morbidly obese patients still opt to go through weight loss surgeries even though it does not affect their survival rate because it can significantly decrease their weight.

Overweight individuals who are not considered obese according to previous Food and Drug Administration standards now qualify to be candidates for Lap Band Surgery as an effective weight loss technique thanks to the FDA’s recent lowering of weight requirements for Lap Band patients. In mid-February, the FDA relaxed its weight requirements for using Allergan’s Lap-Band stomach restriction device used in the popular weight loss surgery. The new ruling lowers the required body mass index, or BMI of the patient from 40 with no obesity-related health problems to 35, and to a BMI of 30 for those individuals with current health complications.

The FDA’s new ruling enables more than 26 million people struggling with weight issues in America to be able to consider having Lap Band Surgery, almost double the number of individuals that were previously eligible for this type of weight loss surgery. The advisory committee to the FDA in making its endorsement to widen the availability of the Lap-Band noted that the many benefits of the device were greater than the risks for patients who are on the fringe of obesity levels.

Under the old regulations, an obese man with a health condition such as diabetes, standing 5 feet 6 inches tall would have had to weigh at least 216 pounds in order to qualify for Lap-Band Surgery. Under the new FDA regulations, that same surgical candidate with the same medical condition could weigh as much as 30 pounds less, or 186 pounds, and still qualify to use Lap Band Surgery as his chosen weight loss method.

Allergan helped to win the new regulations by submitting a study which showed that Lap-Band Surgery patients lost an average of 18% of their body weight within a year of the surgery. Allergan has agreed to continue to follow these same patients in clinical studies for the next 5 years.

In recent years as diet drugs have gone out of favor and some have been pulled off the market for being dangerous, the Lap-Band, an inflatable silicone ring positioned on the stomach to help reduce food intake and make the patient feel fuller after consuming less calories, has increased in popularity for both its safety and effectiveness.