A recent study looked at the records of a substantial number of people who had bariatric surgery in the 10 years from 1995 to 2004 and discovered that about one percent of patients died within a year of surgery and that approximately 6 percent died within 5 years. When the statistics had been adjusted to account for age and sex and matched against statistics for the population at large they were discovered to be reasonably high. So what does this say about the ability of bariatric surgery to lessen the overall risk to our health?

To answer this particular question then we need to look beyond the headline figures and find out why these deaths happened and where the real difference lies between weight loss patients and the population at large.

When you look at the breakdown of the figures two things in particular stand out.

The first is the number of patients whose deaths resulted from heart disease which is the main cause of death in the gastric bypass patients and is substantially above that seen in the population as a whole.

The second is the number of deaths which resulted from suicide and drug overdoses which, although not formally recorded as suicide, must nonetheless raise the question of whether these overdoses were really accidents. In the population as a whole you could expect to find roughly 2 deaths from suicide in a group of the same size as the study group and yet this study group showed a total of 30 deaths from suicide and drug overdoses.

When we look at these findings and set them alongside our wider knowledge about people undergoing bariatric surgery then we might possibly explain this variation to a certain degree.

In spite of the fact that weight loss surgery is normally very successful it is often not carried out until people are suffering from other conditions and, though surgery can cure several of these problems and lessen the risks from others, a lot of people are still at some risk after surgery. For instance, in a lot of cases patients continue to be troubled by things like hypertension and diabetes mellitus and it is perhaps unsurprising that this section of the population at large remains at higher risk from heart disease.

In addition, while gastric bypass surgery may lead to a significant weight loss a lot of patients are still heavily overweight for a considerable time after surgery and many individuals will remain so for months or years to come.

Lastly, the changes in lifestyle which follow surgery are dramatic and a lot of people experience depression in the weeks following their surgery. It is a fact that much attention is given to the physical affects of weight loss surgery and the requirement for things like a strictly controlled diet and an exercise program but, all too frequently, very little attention is paid to the very real psychological affects of surgery.

Only time will reveal the extent to which this explanation is valid but there is little doubt that improved post-operative care for weight loss surgery patients would go a long way to solving this difference.