Morbid Obesity

Today I have a morbidly obese patient coming in for surgery.. Her BMI (body mass index) is 44.4. She is slightly shorter than me but her body weight almost double mine... Body weight of 108 kg with height of 156 cm. She is not the biggest size patient that I have seen or treated so far..

There's many many more who are bigger than her.. I can recall few... One of them is one of our recent ICU patient, with the problem of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) with bronchopneumonia and respiratory failure, requiring intubation and ventilatory support. I don't know what's her actual body weight but she is very very huge and definitely she weights more than 150 kg. Thank God no difficult intubation (Cormack and Lehane Grade 1 on laryngoscopy)

Another one that I can recall is a 156 kg lady came in for BTL (bilateral tubal ligation). Couldn't get any blood pressure cuff that suits her.. I think we put an arterial line for her at the end.. And it's so difficult to do regional anaesthesia for her. Difficult to do the surgery for her cos the fat layer is so thick.. So much adipose fat tissue... And the interesting thing is that her husband is so "small size".. something like 50 kg only :)

My fellow colleague, Gasman posted something on morbid obesity as well not long ago.