Background

Bariatric surgery in combination with pharmacotherapy has been proven to be successful in combatting weight regain in adults; however, there is a gap in literature relating to how anti-obesity medication can augment weight loss in adolescents before and after bariatric surgery, despite the increasing number of children undergoing these procedures.

Methods

A literature search using the PRISMA guidelines was performed in PubMed to identify studies related to the pharmacologic treatment of obesity in adolescents before and after bariatric surgery.

Results

As seen in Image 1, initial database search yielded 1275 results. Following the removal of duplicates, 879 publications remained. This was cut down to 63 sorted for our exclusion criteria. Full articles were examined and 46 were excluded due to relevance. Seventeen articles were included in our qualitative analysis. A total of 1,825 adolescents were treated with pharmacotherapy, 181 of which had a history of bariatric surgery. However, 0 studies reported weight loss data specific to these bariatric patients.

Conclusions

The absence of studies investigating use of anti-obesity medications in adolescent bariatric patients reveals a gap in current research. There is a wealth of evidence highlighting the efficacy of pharmacotherapy assisting with weight loss in adolescents with obesity, however, our literature search showed a lack of research focusing on the use of pharmacotherapy in the adolescent bariatric population specifically. Clinical trials to determine the efficacy of medications as adjunct to bariatric surgery in preventing weight regain and leading to optimal weight loss in this population is of utmost importance.