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BRITAIN’S obesity epidemic is leading to soaring numbers of knee and hip replacements, according to official figures.
Since 2009, the number of jointreplacement operations carried out annually on patients classed as obese has risen by more than 18,000 – a fourfold increase. Health campaigners say this is the latest worrying sign that the country’s obesity crisis is out of control, and costing taxpayers dearly.
Each knee replacement costs the NHS an average of £6,500. Hip replacements are even more expensive, at about £9,000 each.
Over the past six years, the total number of knee replacements carried out annually in English NHS hospitals has risen from 76,071 to 91,436, a 20 per cent increase. They are now costing almost £600million a year.
But during that time, the number of knee replacements carried out on those classed as obese has grown at a much faster rate – from 3,787 in 2009/10 to 15,188 in 2014/15.
The total number of hip replacements has increased from 94,913 to 113,000. They now cost the NHS about £1billion a year – or one per cent of its entire budget.
Of the total, the number of hip replacements carried out on obese patients has also shot up, from 2,404 to 9,539, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.
Britain is now one of the fattest countries in Europe. A quarter of the adult population is now obese, having a body mass index (BMI) – a ratio of weight to height – of 30 or more.
Weight matters because if joints are put under heavy pressure for years they are more likely to wear away, leading to arthritis.
The proportion of adults classed as obese does appear to have levelled off in the past few years. But Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said this disguised the increase in the ‘morbidly obese’ – those who have a BMI of 35 or higher.
A 5ft 6in person who has a BMI of 35 will weigh 15st 4lb.
Mr Fry said: ‘Obese people are getting even more obese, and people’s bodies are now buckling under their sheer weight.’ He added: ‘NHS chief execu- tive Simon Stevens is absolutely correct when he says that the cost of obesity could well bring down the NHS.’
Professor Peter Kay, NHS England’s ‘tsar’ for musculoskeletal services, said: ‘It is absolutely true that people are getting fatter and the numbers of hip and knee replacements are going up too. The trend is a real one.
‘If you have spent a large part of your life overweight, you are more likely to end up with arthritis in the knees.’
Arthritis of the knee was more closely linked to obesity than arthritis of the hip, he said. But Prof Kay believes that such a large and sudden rise in joint-replacement surgery among those classed as obese could not be explained by Britain’s expanding waistlines alone, and was partly the result of doctors being more likely to record the weight of a patient than they have been in the past. ‘Obesity is now a higher priority for the NHS, so we record it more,’ he added.