Increased Life Expectancy In Bariatric Surgery Patients

As promised from my previous article about Weight Loss Surgery Benefits, this post will give you details about how bariatric surgery can help increase life expectancy in severely obese patients.

In an article by Healio which was published in 2007 by The New England Journal of Medicine, bariatric surgery helped reduced premature death in patients with extreme obesity. People suffering from extreme obesity are at higher risks from dozens of serious diseases that includes heart problems, diabetes, hypertension, cancers and many others.Lets take a short recap about this kind of weight loss method.

The word bariatric is a branch of medicine that primarily deals with obesity. Also known as weight loss surgery, bariatrics is today’ most in-demand surgical procedure, with over 100,000 patients per year in America alone.

There are different types of bariatric procedures, gastric bypass as the most popular of them all. Other types includes gastric restriction, malabsorptive surgery, jejunoileal bypass and gastroplasty. All these procedures are expensive and provides long term weight loss. However, bariatric surgeries are irreversible so you better talk to you physician before undergoing this kind of operation.

From the journal mentioned above, it shows a long-term study about the effects of bariatric surgery in about 4000 obese volunteers. The research concludes that weight loss surgery particularly gastric bypass, can reduce mortality rates in obese people.

The study started in Sweden with half of the four thousand subjects underwent bariatric surgeries, the rest applied the traditional weight loss remedies. Interestingly, the researchers were able to follow all subject for ten long years and track their ratios of death.

It turns out that patients who underwent bariatric surgeries have more significant weight loss compared to those who applied conventional weight loss methods. In an average, people who had gastric bypass resulted in 32% change in weight, vertical-banded gastroplasty resulted in a 25% weight change while lap band resulted in 10%. The rest of the subject who had no surgery only had 2% fluctuations from their starting weight 10 years ago.

The study have a stunning report with regards to the number of deaths between the two groups. People who undergone surgery had less number of deaths compared to the group who applied conventional weight loss with 29% difference. The most common cause of death were heart attack and cancer. Some causes are surgery related such as complications and infections but interestingly, 0.10% of these deaths are from the group who did not had weight loss surgeries but with surgeries not related to bariatrics.

The research also concludes that weight loss surgeries had more positive effects and lower cases of obesity related conditions such as diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, low levels of HDL cholesterol, hypertension and hyperuricemia.

The study concludes that bariatric surgery has much more favorable results, a much more effective weight loss treatment outcome compared to conventional slimming program such as exercise and dieting.

Over all, gastric bypass is the most viable treatment option for obesity compared to banding or gastroplasty. It offers long-term weight loss and will improve your way of life. But since the study was randomized, the cause of low mortality rate with regards to bariatric surgery remains obscure.

If you are obese and you are giving bariatric surgery a second thought, then I urge you to speak to your doctor about the risks and benefits of surgery. This will enlighten you up if you really need this kind of treatment.