Long-term care of obese individuals in a community-based primary health care program.

A four-year treatment program for severe obesity containing behavioural modification, exercise and nutrition advice was developed at the obesity unit at the Karolinska Hospital. The program made it possible to achieve a sustained weight loss. As far as we know such long-term treatment result has not been reported for this group of patients before. As a consequence of the positive outcome the hospital treatment program was transformed to an out-patient program that could be used in a primary health care setting. The transformation process is emphasized in this presentation but also preliminary results of the weight reduction and the attrition rate in the primary health care setting of the weight reduction program are presented. The evaluation indicates that instructors and participants in the program overall have accepted the program. The mean weight reduction after ten weeks was 6.3 kg. The attrition rate during that time was 2%.