Teen Girls’ Fat Surgery May Raise Birth Defect Risk, Study Says

Teenage girls who’ve undergone obesity surgery may not absorb enough of a vitamin needed to have healthy babies, raising the risk of bearing children with spine and brain birth defects, a study suggests.

While more adolescents are having gastric bypass surgery, little is known about long-term consequences of the procedure, said Diana Farmer, who presented the study today at the American Association of Pediatrics meeting in San Francisco. “The possibility of future birth defects may outweigh the benefit of this bariatric procedure” for adolescent girls, said Farmer, chief of pediatric surgery at Benioff Children’s Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco.