About us
The bariatric service at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, known as the Imperial weight centre, is based at Charing Cross Hospital. We provide a comprehensive lifestyle, medical and surgical service for patients who are morbidly obese and need to lose weight. Our primary objective is to make our patients healthy and functional.
We are recognised as an international centre of excellence for bariatric surgery by the Surgical Review Corporation, which assesses the safety and quality of bariatric centres across the world.
Our ten-strong team of clinicians, dietitians, psychiatrists, specialist nurses and surgeons run weekly lifestyle and pharmacotherapy clinics and provide a bariatric surgery service. Treatments are tailored to each individual and surgery will always be the last option.
We assess all our patients for co-existing illnesses caused by their obesity so that we are fully aware of any potential risks that may arise during their treatment. All new patients are discussed in a weekly multidisciplinary meeting. This allows the whole team to have a complete understanding of the patient’s situation before any treatment decisions are made. Our experience has shown that this approach leads to a significantly better patient outcome.
In April 2008 our service was declared a preferred provider for bariatric surgery by the South East Coast Specialised Commissioning Group, who have identified the best hospitals to carry out this surgery in London and the south and east of England.
Our surgeons carry out around six to 12 operations a week on average between them. Our experience and skill in these operations mean that half of our gastric banding operations are treated as day case procedures, and patients who have a gastric bypass are only expected to stay two nights in hospital. Our operations are carried out as quickly as possible, meaning less surgical risk and less time spent in intensive care compared with other hospitals.
As part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the largest NHS trusts in England, we can call upon a wide range of resources and other clinical services to help benefit our patients. Other services that are particularly relevant to our patients include the following:
• Nutrition and dietetics
• Cardiology
• Endocrinology and diabetes
• Sleep medicine
© 2012 Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust