New Methods For Assessing Your Risk Factors For Bariatric Surgery

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine have identified several factors that can increase your risk of death during or shortly after weight loss surgery. After looking at the health records of over 100,000 patients who have received bariatric surgery, the researchers have identified what they are calling the top six risk factors. These factors are important because they can be used to reduce risks when planning the surgery. The research and its results are being shared at the Twenty Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

According to Ninh T. Nguyen, MD, the Chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery at the UC Irvine Medical Center and the lead author of this study, it is important that these risk factors be used by the patient and the care team when planning the surgery for the best possible outcomes. Better planning can mean a reduction in risk factors and can lead to a safer surgery overall.

The risk factors listed at the top of the study included the type of surgery that is used, the surgical technique used to accomplish the surgery, the patient’s gender and their age, the type of insurance that they have and whether or not they have diabetes or not. The study showed that having one or more of these risk factors increased the patient’s risk of death before being discharged from the hospital.

After reviewing the discharge data for surgical patients from 2002-2009, the researchers had a solid picture of the average patient. Nearly 80% of them were female, with the majority being Caucasian. Nearly half of the patients had the laparascopic gastric bypass surgery, the less invasive version of the surgical procedure. Only 14% of the patients had the adjustable gastric banding surgery, performed as a laparascopic procedure.

While all surgeries do have risk factors, surgeries being performed on obese patients can be even riskier for a number of reasons. Still, the AMA feels that the benefits of weight loss surgery, especially the increase of life expectancy, can greatly outweigh the risk factors. There are 15 million people in the morbid obesity range, costing $147 billion in health care costs, double the cost from ten years ago. Projections are saying that that cost can be as high as $344 billion by 2018.

Weight loss surgery was once reserved for those who had a BMI of 35 or higher with an underlying health condition or a BMI of 40, even with no other health risks. Recently, the Federal Drug Administration approved using weight loss surgery options for those with lower BMIs because of the known health risks associated with obesity at any level.

Those who have any method of weight loss surgery may expect to lose as much as half of their excess weight within six months after the surgery and should have lost nearly 80% of that weight within the first year.These patients also decrease their risk of death prematurely as much as 40%.

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