UC San Diego Health surgeons visited Tijuana on Thursday to toast the launch of a new collaboration with a weight loss surgery center in the northern part of the border city.
There are many horror stories involving medical tourists who went to Mexico to lose weight, but proponents of this new collaboration say that medical tourism remains here.
Dr. Santiago Hogan, a professor of clinical surgery at the University of California, San Diego and one of the leading physicians in the new partnership with the International Institute of Metabolism, said: , Or IIMM for short.
Weight loss surgery, also known as obesity surgery or stomach banding, aims to help people suffering from obesity lose weight by significantly reducing the size of the stomach.
Costs are usually the main determinant of medical tourists deciding to cross the border for procedures, but some people in the United States travel to Mexico to undergo unqualified procedures.
The IIMM Surgical Center has been accredited by a joint committee of US-based non-profit organizations accrediting medical institutions and programs around the world. According to Hogan, it will follow the guidelines of the American Society of Metabolic Obesity Surgery.
“What happens is that many patients are either uninsured or uninsured. For example, they have a BMI (body mass index) of 37 and overweight of £ 80, but they have diabetes. If you don’t, you won’t be covered by insurance, “Horgan explains. “But if you do nothing, you will have diabetes. Therefore, these patients can come here and have surgery at a much lower price in a safe environment approved by the Joint Commission on the same criteria. . ”
UCSD doctors said they did not directly monitor IIMM and did not support the results as the collaboration was not a complete clinical partnership.
“For now, it’s an academic collaboration,” Hogan said. “And will it grow in the future? I hope it does.”
Dr. Ariel Ortiz, CEO and Founder of the International Institute of Metabolic Medicine, will speak at an event focused on the new partnership between the Tijuana Facility and the University of California, San Diego.
(Wendy Fly / San Diego Union Tribune)
Cross-border collaboration was organically formed. According to Hogan, IIMM founder Dr. Ariel Ortiz taught the “rap band” procedure in Chicago about 20 years ago, and the two remained close friends. Laparoscopic gastric banding is surgery in which a surgeon places a band on top of the stomach to create a small pouch for food.
According to Ortiz, Tijuana’s hospitals focus on education, training, advances in surgical techniques, and the provision of quality patient care.
Dr. Brian Clary, a professor and director of surgery at the University of California, San Diego, said this is an important partnership between the Department of Minimally Invasive Surgery at the University of California, San Diego and the International Institute of Metabolism. The ceremony was held Thursday night at the new three-story IIMM hospital facility on Paseo de los Heroes Street near Mercado Hidalgo in Tijuana.
“We are celebrating more than a partnership between like-minded individuals today dedicated to providing high-quality, minimally invasive surgical options to the patients they serve,” Clary said. .. “Sure, today we are celebrating a basic and ambitious idea. Not only will cross-border human cooperation occur, but it will bring significant benefits to the patients we serve in the community. The idea that it can be done. ”
Endoscopic and surgical tools found at the International Institute of Metabolic Medicine in Tijuana.
(Wendy Fly / San Diego Union Tribune)
Hogan and other doctors agreed that the success of medical tourism in the region (Tijuana’s $ 800 million annual industry) depends on getting rid of bad practices. Due to the lack of government oversight, patients at other facilities in Tijuana underwent dangerous surgical procedures not permitted in the United States, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
The FBI is investigating the death of a woman in Long Beach after several plastic surgery injuries at the Tijuana Clinic in 2021. In Baja California, the man who runs the clinic is a surgeon.
“There is no doubt about it. It needs to be overlooked. The facility is state-of-the-art, with zero deaths out of 26,000 surgeries. Therefore, this kind of reliability with this level of reliability. I think it’s also important to hire a facility, “says Hogan. Drive malicious people out of the market. “Because people keep coming.”
