Bariatric surgery would limit the risk of developing chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and reduce the risk of premature death by 53%. As long as the patients followed the post-operative recommendations. That is, change their diet and have regular physical activity, according to the results of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Researchers at the University of Washington conducted a study of 2,500 obese patients who had bariatric surgery between 2000 and 2011. Severely obese, these patients had an average body mass index (BMI) of 46 kilograms per square meter ( kg / m2).
The majority of operations (74%) performed were gastric bypass (this intervention consists of bypassing a large part of the stomach by reducing it to a small pocket, thus making it possible to reduce the quantity of food ingested but also their assimilation. by the organization). 15% of the patients underwent a longitudinal gastrectomy (or sleeve gastrotectomy) and 10% of them the installation of a flexible gastric band. These two procedures only make it possible to reduce the size of the stomach, definitively for the gastrectomy or reversibly for the band.
They were followed for 14 years and scientists compared their health to that of 7,500 obese controls. During the first 6 years, they found 263 deaths in patients who had surgery (for a mean follow-up of 6.9 years) and 1277 in the control group.
While the researchers did not find any changes in the health of the obese after one year, significant differences were noticed in the short and medium term.
“Mortality was about 50% lower after 1 to 14 years. After 5 years, the death rate was 6.4% with obesity surgery against 10.4% without. Figures respectively of 13.8% against 23.9% after 10 years of follow-up ”explains Dr. David Arterburn, associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington.
Read also:
No, the obese are not healthy
Obesity: a third of the population suffers from overweight
Obesity decreases life expectancy by 8 years
