Risks Involved in Weight-loss Surgery Revealed

Men who undergo bariatric (obesity) surgery are five times as likely to die within 30-days of the procedure compared to women, and their long-term mortality is almost three times higher, according to a new study analysis published in the journal Diabetologia.

As the worldwide obesity rate continues to climb, the number of people seeking weight-loss surgery also increased.

‘Surgical procedures are successful ways to help people with extreme obesity to lose weight, but they can come with complications.’

Bariatric surgery involves a procedure that either limit the amount of food that can be consumed or reduce food absorption resulting in weight loss and lower risks of chronic conditions associated with severe obesity including cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

However, despite similar rates of obesity among men and women-over 70% of patients undergoing bariatric surgery are women.

To understand this gender disparity, it is important to determine whether mortality after bariatric surgery differ between men and women. This may be a potential barrier to providing weight-loss surgery to men.

To find out more, researchers retrospectively analyzed medical health claim data from the Austrian state insurance that covers around 98% of the population (around 9 million Austrians in 2018).

In total, 19,901 patients (14,681 women, average age 41 years; 5,220 men, average age 42 years) who had undergone bariatric surgery (i.e., sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass, biliopancreatic diversion, or gastric banding) between January 2010 and December 2018 were included in the analyses and followed for an average of 5 years (107,806 patient-years of observation).

Researchers analysed sex-specific differences in comorbidities associated with obesity (ie, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, psychiatric disorders, and cancers) in patients who died.

Between January 2010 and April 2020,less than 2% (367/19,901; 176 men and 191 women) of bariatric surgery patients died.

Nevertheless, overall postoperative mortality rates (per year of observation) were almost three times higher among men than women (0.64% vs 0.24%)-although deaths were rare in absolute terms; whilst 30-day mortality was five-fold higher in men compared to women (25 deaths, 0.5% vs 12 deaths, 0.1%).

Among those who died, cardiovascular diseases (84% of men, 80% of women) and psychiatric disorders (51% of men, 58% of women) were the most common comorbidities.

Type 2 diabetes was more common in men than women who died (43% vs 33%), and cancers were more common in women than men (41% vs 30%).

These findings are observational, and there are several limitations including that metabolic data (e.g., BMI, weight loss) were not available for the analysis. A control group of non-operated patients with obesity was not included in the analysis.

In addition, they cannot rule out the possibility that other unmeasured factors (including socioeconomic status, race, smoking) or missing data (eg, dietary habits, physical activity behaviors) may have affected the results.

At last, these findings indicate a pressing need to educate men about the importance of treating obesity earlier, before they develop potentially life-threatening comorbidities.



Source: Medindia