AACE Introduces New Obesity Treatment Module & Toolkit

Timothy Garvey, MD, FACE, Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Chair of the AACE Obesity Scientific Committee, provided an overview of the AACE Module and Tool Kit for Obesity Medicine at the 24^th Annual Scientific & Clinical Congress in Nashville, TN.

As obesity was officially declared a disease by AACE in 2012, the module and toolkit for obesity is slated to provide all healthcare professionals to better implement obesity care within their practices.

Garvey’s overarching concepts surrounded how obesity — having largely been diagnosed solely on the content of BMI – was not at all sufficient.

“The feeling was we not only needed a anthropometric measurement of excess body weight, which led to the severity of weight related complications that led then to the follow up publication 2014 advanced framework for a new diagnosis of obesity as a chronic disease, which did have 2 component diagnosis to obesity using BMI, but also the presence and absence of complications.”

Going forward, there is a plethora of obesity management guidelines published in various journals; however, Garvey and colleagues don’t think any — including their own – is entirely sufficient for practical applications by professionals as they tend to not be comprehensive and are built around a limited number of questions.

Additionally, at times several restrict their evaluation to randomized clinical trials, which are built around selected questions that may not be meaningful or translatable to actual patient care.

“The point is, said Garvey, ” “we really have a lot of work to do in creating evidence based guidelines of practical use by people who are taking care of patients in the real world.”

Addressing AACE’s future plans, Garvey commented, “The evaluation of evidence will support, refute, or lead to modifications of the algorithm, it is really intended to be comprehensive and applicable to real world care.”

“The AACE module and toolkit for obesity medicine emphasizes an efficient process of data gathering, evaluation, and therapeutic decision making for establishing a financially viable model for obesity care in medical practices while significantly improving patient outcomes, “ concluded Garvey.

The board of directors just approved yesterday a second consensus conference to be held next year. One of their immediate goals is to take existing guidelines and congregate different professionals to see how to “go about harmonizing them”.