The United States Food and Drug administration had just approved an obesity treatment that could significantly change the way the issue is handled. The treatment is an implant that actually sends electrical impulses to the stomach, blocks the nerves, and ends up curbing the appetite by cutting out hunger pangs.

The device is called the Maestro Rechargeable System, and will only be used in morbidly obese cases. To qualify a patient must have a body mass index of 35 to 45, and another condition that is related to obesity such as type two diabetes. They also must have tried another weight loss method and failed at it to be considered for the implant.

This implant is the first to pass the FDA’s approval since 2007, and of course went through extensive clinical trials to do so. Those trials found that participants with the Maestro device ended up losing 8.5 percent more weight in a year than the people who were given fake implants. Half of them lost 20 percent of the excess weight that they were carrying around, while 38 percent of them lost 25 percent of the excess weight.

Additionally, the people with the real device kept the weight off while those with the fake device gained back 40 percent of the weight they had lost within a six month period. So far in the studies on the Maestro implant, only four percent of the participants had any health issues from the implant. This gives hope that the device could be a successful long term option.

Currently in the United States over one third of adults are obese, which puts them at risk for a host of health issues including type 2 diabetes, some cancers, strokes, and heart disease. An option like this one has the potential to provide an alternative for cutting down the obesity epidemic.

Now that the device has passed the FDA’s approval, it still has to undergo a five year study using 100 participants to ensure its safety. The device actually did not meet its original goal set for the clinical study, but the benefits that it demonstrated and the potential long term effectiveness of it was enough to get it passed.

Any weight loss plan that includes surgery is going to be considered quite the risk no matter how effective it is, so professionals in the medical field have some mixed feelings about the device.

Dr. Maria Pena, who is the director at the Center for Weight Management at North Shore-LIJ’s Syosset Hospital in New York considers its challenges.

“It seems like it does work in promoting weight loss, but we don’t know how much. Is it worth the hassle of going through surgery? We’re going to need more data and more time, because we’ve tried this in the past and it hasn’t been very effective,” she said.

Christopher Ochner, who is a nutrition and obesity expert at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City has a slightly different view point.

“Contrary to what many still believe, obesity is largely a biologically mediated disease. Therefore, it makes sense that more biologically based interventions will be required to achieve lasting weight loss,” he said.