A new study by Swedish researchers has put a figure on the knock-on health benefits that bariatric surgery can have for formerly obese people.
The effects of weight loss surgery have long been considered to aide the long-term health prospects of severely overweight people. The new research, carried out by scientists at Sweden's University of Gothenburg, surveyed 4,000 obese people treated at 500 different centres in Sweden between 1987 and 2001, with half of them undergoing stomach stapling or gastric band surgery and half of them opting not to.
The results showed that while 199 people who had the surgery suffered a heart attack with in a decade of the surgery, that applied to 234 of the people who opted not to have the surgery. Some 28 of the people who had been surgically aided to lose weight died within the decade, while 49 of the people without the surgery passed away.
Lead researcher, Lars Sjostrom said, "Compared with usual care, bariatric surgery was associated with reduced number of cardiovascular deaths and lower incidence of cardiovascular events in obese adults."
Ted Adams, an expert on bariatric surgery and health outcomes at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City (who did not work on the Swedish project), said the study will aid and inform doctors and patients across the world about the long-term effects of the surgery.
"This is very beneficial in filling that gap – we just have so little long-term data," said Adams.
The Swedish researchers accounted for the differences in the base health levels between the people who did and did not have the surgery, and the found that the patients who had the treatment were 30 per cent less likely to have a first-time heart attack or stroke than those who did not, and half as likely to die from one.
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