Abstract

Background: Success rate of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (SG) depends on disease and patient characteristics that are yet to be fully established.
Objectives: To evaluate which patient characteristics influence the success of SG.
Setting: National bariatric reference centre at a Public Hospital.
Methods: A retrospective study was performed based on prospectively collected data of patients who had bariatric surgery at our institution, during a 5 year period. Patients with 12 or more months of follow-up were included. We analyzed data from 133 SG. Seventy-nine percent of the patients were female with a median age of 46 years, a median baseline Body Mass Index (BMI) of 41 kg/m² and a mean of 2.5 out of 7 comorbidities.
Results: After the first year, the mean percentage Excess Weight Loss (%EWL) was 69.3%, the mean change in BMI was -11.8 kg/m² and the mean % total body weight loss was 27.4%. Surgical success (%EWL ≥ 50%) was achieved in 82% of the patients, with significant improvement or resolution of comorbidities (follow-up rate 76%-88%). We found statistical significant differences with baseline BMI (p<0.0001), with OSA (p<0.0001), with age (p=0.04) and with the number of comorbidities (p=0.05). Higher baseline characteristics implicated less %EWL. The presence of HTN or arthropathy and being a volume eater or a sweet eater did not influence surgical success (χ² ≤ 0.01).
Conclusions: SG is an effective surgical treatment for obesity. After one year the majority of patients had surgical success and major comorbidities were mitigated or resolved. Success was influenced by specific patient and disease characteristics.

Keywords: Obesity; Morbidity; Bariatric surgery; Gastrectomy; Laparoscopy; Treatment outcome