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The makers of minimally invasive surgical devices seemed poised to capture a wide swath of the obesity treatment market. Patients needed an option that lay between the two treatment extremes: cutting open the abdomen to perform permanent bariatric surgery, or changing your diet or exercise routine.

Then, a new class of weight loss medications that successfully mimic the feeling of fullness hit the market, and the landscape changed.

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“It turns out that what came along — before those endoscopic devices have really matured — is these new drugs,” said Lee Kaplan, director of Massachusetts General’s obesity institute. Since the Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in 2021, it and similar drugs that followed have swiftly captured the public’s interest — and are on their way to generating billions of dollars in sales.

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