Three days after undergoing bariatric surgery, Dawna Bonde was out walking and shopping.
“I feel great,” she said Thursday morning at the launch of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre’s bariatric surgery program.
Bonde was the program’s first patient and underwent the weight loss surgery in August.
With a surgical program now in Thunder Bay, patients no longer have to travel to southern Ontario or to the U.S. for a procedure.
“It feels awesome to be home in my own backyard. I’ve got my support team here – my family, my friends. It feels good not to have to travel out of town to do it,” Bonde said.
The Regional Bariatric Care Centre opened at the hospital in 2010 as an assessment and pre-operative care centre.
Patients would then be referred out of town for the actual surgery.
With the addition of the surgical program, it is evolving into one of the province’s six Bariatric Centres of Excellence.
With obesity rates 10 per cent higher in Northwestern Ontario than the rest of the province, the centre’s medical director Asiru Abu-Bakare said the need is clear.
“We have a large population that requires the treatment we are providing,” he said, adding wait times will be reduced now that patients don’t have to travel out of town for the surgery.
The bariatric care centre consists of a team of health care professionals, including dieticians, a psychologist, social worker, nurse, nurse practitioner and kinesiologist.
That team now includes two bariatric surgeons – Andrew Smith and Scott Cassie.
Smith said in the first year of the program, they hope to treat 130 patients and increase that to 170 in their second year.
And although the addition of surgeons to the program will reduce wait times and emotional stress for patients, the treatment is a team effort.
“I think when we look at bariatric care, we have to realize surgery really is only one tool in terms of managing obesity,” Smith said.
“For the patients itself, those other tools include a healthy active lifestyle and healthy eating. It’s very important not only to have surgeons involved but to have the full complement of the team because there are other people that are important to the care of that patient.”
