Over the last few years, I have been working alongside other bariatric surgeons including Healthier Weight’s Mr Jamie Kelly and Mr Periyathambi Jambulingam to publish the worlds first study on the safety of revisional bariatric surgery in private practice.
This is one of the largest single centre revisional surgery series in world, and it’s into an area of bariatric surgery that is yet to be explored. I am extremely pleased to say that outcomes were finally published today.
The study was carried out on 178 patients with a BMI of above 45.6 and found that single-stage conversions were as safe as two-stage. Furthermore, overall complication rate was 2.8% and morbidity rate was 0%.
Why is the study important?
In 2016, the World Health Organisation reported 13% of the adult population had obesity; this was over 650 million individuals worldwide. In the United Kingdom, 28.7% of adults were reported to have obesity in 2017 with 1 in 8 (3.6%) being morbidly obese.
Bariatric surgery has long been established as the most efficient and durable modality to achieve sustainable weight loss. However, as obesity is a chronic relapsing disease, some patients require revisional surgery during the mid/long-term follow-up after primary surgery.
Although there are reports that safety profile of revisional surgery is similar to that of primary bariatric surgery, most agree that the former is associated with higher morbidity rates and less optimal outcomes than those seen following primary surgery.
Revisional bariatric surgery is unavoidable in a proportion of patients. Despite its need, the development of this speciality has been hampered by its complexity and preferred delivery in institutional set ups. Although primary bariatric surgery can be delivered in the private sector; safety and feasibility of revisional bariatric surgery remains unexplored in this setting.
Alternatively, read all about revisional surgery with Healthier Weight below.