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.

A new report indicated that cancer rates in the US are continually dropping by at almost one percent per year. Moreover, the same study found out that cancer-related deaths are also going down by 1.6 per cent annually. This trend was observed between 2003 and 2007.

The researchers also noted that this is the first time they observed a decrease in the death rate of women with lung cancer. Lynn Ries, co-author of the report, said that the decline we are seeing right now is caused by women quitting smoking.

The report was conducted by several researchers from different groups; one of which is the American Cancer Society. The report was published online on the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Thursday.

Unfortunately, even though there is a notable decrease in cancer rates among adults, the same is not true among children. In fact, there are increasing numbers of diagnosed cancer patients in children. Ries, however, pointed out that death rates among children decreased. She also said that the reason for the rise in the occurrence of cancer among children is still unclear.

If there are changes in variables among women and children with cancer, the numbers remained the same among men. The report said that there could have been a decrease in cancer diagnosis among men, only that the statistics of prostate cancer has raised.

Ries said that this report was particularly difficult to organize because cancer is not just one disease. There are different kinds of cancer and some of them increase in number, while others decrease. She also said that men and women follow different kinds of trends in terms of cancer diagnosis.