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LOS ANGELES -- Percutaneous nerve cryoablation may be one way for patients with mild-to-moderate obesity to achieve weight loss, according to a pilot study presented here.

Operators achieved 100% technical success in their initial 10-patient experience inserting an ablation probe through the patient's back and freezing the posterior vagal trunk with argon gas, J. David Prologo, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, reported at the annual .

Study participants went into the cryoablation with BMIs between 30 and 37; at 90-day follow-up, they had an average total weight loss of 3.6% and had shed 13.9% of excess BMI. No adverse events occurred over this time.

Live CT imaging was the guide for this procedure. Prologo noted there were no procedure-related complications.

The target of the procedure, the posterior vagal trunk signals the brain when the stomach is empty.

"Medical literature shows the vast majority of weight-loss programs fail, especially when people attempt to reduce their food intake," Prologo said in a statement. "When our stomachs are empty, the body senses this and switches to food-seeking survival mode. We're not trying to eliminate this biological response, only reduce the strength of this signal to the brain to provide a new, sustainable solution to the difficult problem of treating mild obesity."

After cryoablation, all patients reported decreased appetite throughout follow-up: 17% "somewhat less appetite," 30% "much less appetite," 53% "very much less appetite."

Study investigators noted that eight out of the ten study participants were women.

Commenting to 番茄社区app, Grant Schmit, MD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said this was the first he'd heard of this type of weight-loss procedure and suggested that it remains up in the air whether it's truly safe or the results plausible.

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