Washington, Jan 4 (ANI): Bariatric surgery reduces long-term incidence of cardiovascular deaths and events like heart attack and stroke among obese people, a new study has revealed.
Most epidemiological studies have shown that obesity is associated with increased cardiovascular events and death.
Lars Sjostrom, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues conducted a study to test the hypothesis that bariatric surgery is associated with a reduced incidence of cardiovascular events and examined the relationship between weight change and cardiovascular events.
The study included 2,010 obese participants who underwent bariatric surgery and 2,037 matched obese controls who received usual care.
Patients were recruited between September 1987 and January 2001. Date of analysis was December 31, 2009, with median (midpoint) follow-up of 14.7 years. Inclusion criteria were age 37 to 60 years and a body mass index of at least 34 in men and at least 38 in women.
Surgery patients underwent gastric bypass (13.2 percent), banding (18.7 percent), or vertical banded gastroplasty (68.1 percent), and controls received usual care in the Swedish primary health care system. Physical and biochemical examinations and database cross-checks were undertaken at pre-planned intervals.
The average changes in body weight after 2, 10,15, and 20 years were -23 percent, -17 percent, -16 percent, and -18 percent in the surgery group and 0 percent, 1 percent, -1 percent, and -1 percent in the control group, respectively.
During follow-up, there were 49 cardiovascular deaths among the patients in the control group and 28 cardiovascular deaths among the patients in the surgery group. In total (fatal and nonfatal), there were 234 cardiovascular events among patients in the control group and 199 cardiovascular events among patients in the surgery group.
After adjustment for a number of variables, bariatric surgery was associated with a reduced number of fatal cardiovascular deaths and a lower incidence of total cardiovascular events.
Bariatric surgery was associated with reduced number of fatal heart attack deaths (22 in the surgery group vs. 37 in the control group), with analysis indicating that bariatric surgery was related both to reduced fatal heart attack incidence and total heart attack incidence. Also, bariatric surgery was associated both with reduced number of fatal stroke events and total stroke events.
However, the researchers found no significant relationship between weight change and cardiovascular events in the surgery or control group.
"In conclusion, this is the first prospective, controlled intervention to our knowledge reporting that bariatric surgery is associated with reduced incidence of cardiovascular deaths and cardiovascular events," the authors said.
The study has been recently published in JAMA. (ANI)
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