Children who are so fat they need hip replacements

CHILDREN are having NHS hip replacements because they are so fat, official figures reveal.

One child aged ten to 14 and four aged 15 to 19 had the operation last year, with obesity as the main or secondary cause, according to NHS Digital.

While the figures are low, they are an increase on the two 15 to 19-year-old patients in 2015 and three in 2014.

More than 4million British children and teenagers are overweight or obese, according to the World Health Organisation. Some 41 per cent of five to 19-year-olds are considered to be too heavy, with experts calling it an ‘absolute crisis’.

Obese children are particularly at risk of a hip disease called slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE). The condition requires surgery to insert a screw to stabilise the hip, and if that does not work a full hip replacement often follows.

Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said the figures were ‘truly saddening’. ‘Although today’s numbers may appear small, they hide a near certainty that they will escalate in the years to come,’ he told The Sunday Times.

‘We must urgently focus our effort on stopping children getting fat in the first place.’ Daniel Perry, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, said: ‘Though we can’t yet be sure that the obesity directly causes this [SCFE], obesity is the primary risk factor.

‘Around 500 adolescents in the UK suffer from this problem every year, with the majority of them being overweight or obese.

‘All children affected by SCFE require prompt surgery to stabilise the hip with a screw. In some cases the hip may be so damaged that a hip replacement becomes necessary soon after the primary surgery, with many more gradually worsening, necessitating a hip replacement early in adulthood.’

Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, has warned that parents are overfeeding their children.

‘The evidence shows that children are being fed more than they require,’ she said.

‘They are having a few more calories every day than they need. It builds up over time. Children are living in households with parents who have an obesity problem themselves, so there are ingrained obesity habits.

‘People tend to underestimate the amount of calories they are eating, and I suspect they underestimate how much their children are eating as well.’

Prime Minister Theresa May last year published a long- awaited childhood obesity strategy that ‘challenged’ the food industry to slash sugar by 20 per cent by 2020.

But critics said the plan was ‘underwhelming’ and ‘watereddown’, and contained nothing that will force companies to act – relying instead on voluntary action and goodwill.

Official statistics show that about a third of children are obese or overweight when they leave primary school.

The latest figures, for 2015/16, show that 19.8 per cent of children in Year 6 (aged ten or 11) were obese and a further 14.3 per cent were overweight.

Of children in Reception classes (aged four or five), 9.3 per cent were obese and another 12.8 per cent were overweight.

‘This will escalate in the years to come’