This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Risk factors for death after bariatric surgery identified

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

28th Annual Meeting of the ASMBS

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine have determined the top six risk factors for in-hospital mortality after bariatric surgery. The data, which were presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery, could potentially help doctors and patients predict, evaluate, reduce and avoid in-hospital mortality after surgery, according to a press release.

“Bariatric surgery is safer than it has ever been, but there may be more we can do to make it even safer and improve the odds of survival for high-risk patients,” Ninh T. Nguyen, MD, chief of the division of gastrointestinal surgery at UC Irvine Medical Center, said in the release. “Doctors can use these risk factors to help in preoperative planning and to help patients better understand his or her individual risk.”

The risk factors include:

• type of surgery;
• surgical technique;
• type of insurance;
• sex;
• age; and
• presence of type 2 diabetes.

Having one or more of these risk factors may increase the risk for death before hospital discharge, according to the researchers.

Using the University HealthSystem Consortium database, Nguyen and colleagues identified 105,287 patients who underwent bariatric surgery between 2002 and 2009 at academic medical centers in the US. Types of surgery included: gastric bypass (45%), open gastric bypass (41%) and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (14%).

The primary outcome — overall in-hospital mortality rate — was 0.17%. Adjusted ORs were calculated for each top risk factor to determine their individual and relative effect on mortality. The top risk factors were being male (adjusted OR=3.2), gastric bypass procedure (adjusted OR=5.8), open surgical technique (adjusted OR=4.8), the presence of comorbid conditions (adjusted OR=6.0), the presence of type 2 diabetes (adjusted OR=1.6), Medicare payer (adjusted OR=3.0) and age of at least 60 years (adjusted OR=1.9).

“It is important to remember that, despite these risk factors, we are still talking about highly effective and safe operations that result in significant weight loss and improvement or resolution of obesity-related diseases,” Nguyen said in the release. “Morbid obesity itself is a major risk factor for premature death and, in fact, may be riskier without intervention than the surgery itself. The data show laparoscopic bariatric surgery has become no riskier than gallbladder or hip replacement surgery.”

For more information:

• Nguyen NT. #PL-108. Presented at: the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery; June 12-17, 2011; Orlando, Fla.

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.

Follow EndocrineToday.com on Twitter.