Bariatric Surgery Is Linked to Long-Term, Sustained Weight Loss

Patients who undergo roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) lose significantly more weight compared with those undergoing nonsurgical procedures and can sustain the weight loss over a 10-year period, according to new research.

It is well known that bariatric surgery induces significant weight loss for obese patients. However, the sustainability of weight loss in patients who undergo bariatric surgery vs those who have nonsurgical procedures is less understood.
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The researchers collected data from 1787 veterans who underwent RYGB from January 1, 2000, through September 30, 2011, and 5305 nonsurgical matches registered in the Veterans Administration health care system.

Veterans who underwent RYGB were also compared to those who had sleeve gastrectomy (SG) and adjustable gastric banding (AGB) at 4 years and 10 years after the procedure.

After 4 years, patients who underwent RYGB had lost significantly more weight (27.5%) than then those who underwent SG (17.8%) and AGB (10.6%).

At 10 years, 71.8% of patients who underwent RYGB had more than 20% estimated weight loss compared with 10.8% of nonsurgical matches and 39.7% of RYGB patients had more than 30% estimated weight loss compared to 3.9% of nonsurgical matches.

Only 3.4% of RYGB patients regained weight to within 5% of their baseline weight after 10 years.

“Patients in the Veterans Administration health care system lost substantially more weight than nonsurgical matches and sustained most of this weight loss in the long term,” the researchers concluded.

“Roux-en-Y gastric bypass induced significantly greater weight loss among veterans than SG or AGB at 4 years. These results provide further evidence of the beneficial association between surgery and long-term weight loss that has been demonstrated in shorter-term studies of younger, predominantly female populations.”

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Maciejewski ML, Arterburn DE, Van Scoyoc L, et al. Bariatric surgery and long-term durability of weight loss [published online August 31, 2016]. JAMA Surg. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2016.2317.