Konservative Therapie der Adipositas: Was können Sie empfehlen?Options for conservative treatment of obesity

Obesity affects every fourth adult in Germany and represents one of the greatest challenges for national healthcare. Irrespective of its relevance, obesity is not recognised as a chronic disease. For this reason, the available treatment services are rather limited. As obesity is a consequence of an inadequate lifestyle, the first approach should be a multimodal programme combining an energy-reduced diet, an increase in physical activity and behaviour modification. There are many evidence-based combinations of those components opening the opportunity to offer individual treatment regimens. Due to time constraints general practitioners (GPs) should refer patients to dieticians, recommend evaluated self-management programmes or prescibe a certified digital health application. If conservative treatment is not successful, GPs should inform their patients about the options of adjuvant drug therapy or bariatric surgery.