Lasting Benefits from Weight Loss Surgery

Gastric bypass surgery can have lasting benefits for weight, metabolism, and overall health, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. There were approximately 1,100 patients in the study that lasted 6 years. Around 400 received gastric bypass surgery; another group of about 400 people wanted surgery but were put on a long-term waiting list to serve as a control group. The third group consisted of about 300 equally obese patients who had not expressed any interest in bypass surgery. After 6 years, those who had undergone surgery had average weight loss of about 28 percent of initial body weight. The people in the control groups did not lose weight.
Roughly two-thirds of the bariatric surgery patients who had begun the study with type 2 diabetes saw it go into remission. In the control groups, fewer than one tenth had that outcome. At the end of 6 years, the bypass group had lower blood pressure and LDL cholesterol and higher HDL. Such metabolic measures worsened in the control groups.
Bariatric surgery does have complications, and there were more unplanned hospitalizations among the patients who had surgery. On the whole, however, the researchers concluded that the benefits outweighed the risks.
[JAMA, Sept. 19, 2012]