Findings About Post-Surgery Complications
MSN Health & Fitness, 28th July 2010
A new study about bartiatric surgery done in the state of Michigan shows that there is a relatively low risk of serious complications after the procedure.
The report published in the July 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed the findings of Nancy Birkmeyer of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 15,275 patients took part in the research. They all underwent one of three common bariatric procedures between 2006 and 2009. The operations were performed by 62 surgeons at 25 hospitals in Michigan.
The results showed that only 7.3% of patients experienced minor complications such as wound problems, for example. Serious complications were most common after gastric bypass (3.6 %), sleeve gastrectomy (2.2 %), and laparoscopic adjustable gastric band (0.9 %) procedures. Rates of serious complications at hospitals varied from 1.6% to 3.5%.
Infections were the most common among patients undergoing gastric bypass (4.4%) and sleeve gastrectomy (2.5%).
Another interesting result showed that fatal complications occurred in only two patients undergoing laparoscopic adjustable gastric band (0.04%), 13 patients undergoing gastric bypass (0.14%) and zero patients receiving sleeve gastrectomy.
The overall rates of serious complications were similar among patients who had bariatric surgery at centers of excellence (COE) hospitals (2.7%) and those who had surgery at non-COE hospitals (2%), the report said.
The researchers wrote that their results might not apply outside of the state of Michigan, but said they represented “useful safety performance benchmarks for hospitals performing bariatric surgery.”
