Teen Dies After Weight-Loss Surgery

[yvonnemetcalf]

Teen dies less than a year after weight-loss surgery
BY TODD C. FRANKEL



ST. LOUIS - (KRT) - Warren Allen died in April of last year, 10 months after having weight-loss surgery.

It was the end of a painful, confusing journey, his mother said.

Allen was 18 and weighed more than 500 pounds when he underwent a gastric bypass operation in June 2003 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Two days earlier he had graduated from Jennings High School.

He seemed to be doing well until that September, when he collapsed at home, recalled his mother, Vanessa Allen. He didn't lose consciousness, but he couldn't stand up. He went to one hospital and then another, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong, she said. They sent him home.

He failed to get better, Vanessa Allen said. A few days later, unable to walk unassisted, he was back in the hospital. Vanessa Allen said she noticed something strange: Her son couldn't grasp a telephone, he couldn't pick up a drink.

No diagnosis was ever made, but Vanessa Allen said she believes her son was suffering from serious malnutrition. This is a possible complication from gastric bypass surgery, a procedure that reduces a person's ability to absorb nutrients and vitamins.

After months in and out of several hospitals in the St. Louis area, Allen took a turn for the worse. He died on April 4.

According to the autopsy report, septic shock and blood clots in his lung caused Allen's death. Contributing causes were morbid obesity, his status as a gastric bypass patient, open skin wounds, blood clots in his brain, acute renal problems and gangrene in his extremities.