841 Pound Woman Dies Of Heart Attack

[matcom]

<snip>

Renee Williams, the 841-pound woman thought to be the largest ever to receive gastric bypass surgery, died Sunday night of a massive heart attack.

Williams, 29, had undergone the increasingly popular solution to morbid obesity on Feb. 20 and was thought to be progressing well in the week and a half thereafter, said officials at Houston's Renaissance Hospital, where she had the surgery. But hospital officials today announced the sudden turn of events.

The procedure, once frowned on by mainstream doctors, has soared in popularity, with more than 140,000 expected to be performed this year. It makes the stomach smaller and bypasses part of the small intestine, resulting in a patient who feels full more quickly, has less of an appetite and absorbs fewer calories.

There's a small risk when it is performed on people with a BMI, or body mass index, between 35 and 60, but a signficantly larger one when the patient is the size of Williams, who had a BMI of 137.5.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4603051.html

[bertha katzenengel]

1. Very sad. Reminds me of Karen Carpenter's death.

She was on the road to recovery, too, but the damage she'd done to her body turned out to be too great.

[LostinVA]

6. Yup, exactly who I thought of, too

[supernova]

2. Aww how sad

So sorry for her and her family. :-(

[WritingIsMyReligion]

3. Eeeew.

:puke:

[bigwillq]

5. What's so eeew about it?

:shrug:

That she was fat or that she died?

:shrug:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

9. That she died, really.

Though I do have a horrendous ingrained phobia of the morbidly obese after I watched a Dicovery channel program that literally made me vomit.

[bigwillq]

4. That's sad.

:cry:

[LeftyMom]

7. Oh, this isn't about my ex's girlfriend.

:rofl:

[Ariana Celeste]

8. That is so sad

:(