Background

Morbid obesity presents as a health risk affecting multiple organ systems. This study aims to evaluate if preoperative weight loss has any effect on obesity-related comorbidity resolution after bariatric surgery.

Methods

A retrospective analysis was conducted with a preliminary sample of 295 patients who received bariatric surgery for weight loss at Tampa General Hospital from 2016-2018. We followed patients’ preoperative weight change (calculated as excess weight loss, or EWL). The diagnosis and resolution of six comorbidities were also examined over a year (diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obstructive sleep apnea, hepatic steatosis, joint pain). Statistical analyses were completed using SPSS.

Results

In our preliminary data, each comorbidity showed improvement at each timepoint (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year), with diabetes showing the greatest improvement of 80.0% at 1 year. Other comorbidities that showed improvement at 1 year were hypertension (61.1%), hyperlipidemia (53.3%), obstructive sleep apnea (29.3%), hepatic steatosis (63.6%), and joint pain (38.9%). Of these, EWL before surgery was significantly associated with improvement only in diabetes at 1 year (p=.004), with patients who showed improvement having a median EWL of .047 (.082) and patients who did not show improvement had median EWL of -0.002 (.052).

Conclusions

Prior studies have indicated that bariatric surgery is effective in the treatment of morbid obesity and the decline of comorbidities. Here, we show that the benefits of bariatric surgery on diabetes is enhanced when in conjunction with preoperative weight loss. However, preoperative weight loss is not predictive of weight-related comorbidity resolution in general.