How Safe is Gastric-Bypass Surgery?

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How Safe is Gastric-Bypass Surgery?

By Blue | Monday, Nov. 13, 2006 | Permalink | E-Mail

It's one of the most famous procedures in surgery—and one of the

most radical and effective medical treatments for obesity. But how

safe is bariatric surgery, also known as gastric-bypass surgery or

(more crudely) stomach-stampling?

A study of 86,520 bariatric-surgery procedures conducted in 17

states between 2002 and 2004 has uncovered a big difference in the

health outcomes from bariatric surgery. The survey—by the for-profit

hospital-ranking service HealthGrades—found that patients at

hospitals with the highest success rates were 66% less likely to

suffer a major surgery complication than patients at hospitals with

the lowest success rates.

Complications from bariatric surgery, which helps patients lose

weight by constricting the stomach to limit food intake, include

bleeding and respiratory and cardiac problems. The hospitals with

the fewest complications, it seems, are the also ones that performed

the procedure most often. Those hosptials whose quality results

merited a five-star score from HealthGrades conducted roughly twice

as many bariatric surgeries as those receiving a one-star score.

What it means: No surgery is without risk, and bariatric surgery is

a serious procedure: the U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced in

July that 4 in 10 patients suffer complications within six months.

(Only 2 in 1,000 of the HealthGrade study had complications while

still in hospital.)

Still, this is not the first study to suggest that even good doctors

can perform poorly if they're carrying out an unfamiliar procedure.

If you have a choice about where you undergo surgery, it doesn't

hurt to do research which institutions specialize in the procedure

you need.