Study shows long-term improvement in health-related quality of life after bariatric surgery

Significant improvement in health-related quality of life was reported by patients 12-14 years after undergoing an uncommon form of bariatric surgery at one U.S. medical center. Follow-up of the 27 patients who underwent biliary pancreatic diversion surgery with duodenal switch (BPD-DS) by the same surgeon is described in an article in Bariatric Surgical Practice and Patient Care, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free for download until June 2, 2016.

Birgit Khandalavala, MD, Jenenne Geske, PhD, Maya Nirmalaj, and Ranjan Sudan, MD, University of Nebraska, Omaha, used the SF-36 assessment tool to evaluate health-related quality of life (HrQoL) in this group of patients. It provides measures of both physical and mental functioning.

In the article "Biliopancreatic Diversion Revisited: Health Related Quality of Life Outcomes of Biliary Pancreatic with Duodenal Switch," the authors compared the HrQoL scores from the long-term bariatric surgery patients to those obtained pre-surgery from a similar population of patients and to scores from the general population.

"This is one of the unique studies that describe long-term effectiveness for an operation that is less often performed now," says Editor-in-Chief Edward Lin, DO, MBA, Surgical Director, Emory Bariatrics and Director, Gastroesophageal Treatment Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA. "To know how we are doing with an intervention, it is not enough to say that the patient did well in the first 30-days. The follow-up reported here is one example of patient care excellence."