Hospitals in England reported 11,740 inpatient admissions with a primary diagnosis of obesity in 2011/12, according to analysis from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).
This is 1% more than in 2010/11 and triple the number recorded five years earlier. Female admissions were found to be almost three times the number of male admissions (8,740 compared to 2,990). Regionally, North East Strategic Health Authority (SHA) had the highest admission rate at 56 per 100,000 of the population; while East of England SHA had the lowest rate at12 per 100,000. The report Statistics on Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet, England 2013 brings together several sources of recently published information to provide a picture of obesity related issues. It also includes information about hospital inpatient admissions with a primary diagnosis of obesity and a procedure of bariatric surgery, which showed that in 2011/12 hospitals recorded 8,790 inpatient procedures; 9% more than in 2010/11 and over four times more than in 2006/07. The report also showed that fewer than 37% of adults in England are classed as a ‘normal’ weight according to Body Mass Index (BMI) Half of women aged 16 and over were a normal weight in 1993, but this proportion had fallen to 39% by 2011. For men of the same age, the proportion dropped from 41% to 31% over the same period.
