Background: Medical visits are initiated by patients in search of symptom relief. The extent to which obesity independently increases the risk of common symptoms is unknown. Objectives: To assess how obesity affects symptom burden among family medicine patients, after adjustment for severity of...

Background: Primary care providers may refer their patients to a variety of weight loss programs and diet plans. However, the relative effectiveness of the available options is not well understood. This retrospective study compared weight loss in an intensive structured (IS) program using health...

Background: Controlling the number of medical visits consumed by primary care patients is essential to cost containment; therefore, identification of patients likely to be frequent users of medical visits is required. Obesity has not often been used as a marker for selecting patients for disease...