Patients more likely to be hospitalized after gastric bypass

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A study shows that people who have had a gastric bypass have double the rate of hospitalization after their surgery than in the year before.
Gastric bypass is an effective treatment for morbid obesity and it is being used increasingly. But it is not without risk. A team at the University of California Los Angeles has been looking at how gastric bypass impacts on the rate of hospitalization of those having the operation.

Over 60,000 residents of California had gastric bypass between 1995 and 2004, 84 per cent of whom were women. And 19.3 per cent were re-admitted to hospital within a year of the follow-up. In the year before the operation, this rate was 7.9 per cent. In longer-term follow up, the rate of re-admission was still greater than before the operation.

The main reasons for admission to hospital before surgery were obesity-related and afterwards were because of complications related to the operation itself such as hernia repair. Maybe these results are rather disappointing - for weight loss surgery is performed to increase health through decreasing obesity linked problems. Now it seems that the procedure itself may create even more problems.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 19th October 2005 Volume 294 pages 1918-1924

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