Bariatric surgery cannot be assumed to be a sure-shot method to curb depression about overweight in obese people, a new study finds.
There's no dying that obese and overweight people are always trying to shed that extra weight. The quickest, but not necessarily the best way to do so is by opting for a bariatric surgery. However, a new study found that this method cannot be assumed to be a sure-shot method to curb depression about overweight or obese people. The study was conducted by Valentina Ivezaj and Carlos Grilo of the Yale University School of Medicine in the United States. They did the study to investigate how prone bariatric patients are to still experiencing depressive symptoms, and especially if such symptoms increase markedly or not at all, after post-surgery.
For the study, researchers surveyed 107 patients with extreme obesity before they underwent gastric bypass surgery, and then again six and 12 months after the procedure. They were asked to reflect on their levels of depression, possible eating disorders, their self-esteem and general social functioning. Of the 107 participants, 94 were women and 13 were men, 73 were white and 24 had completed college. Confirming previous findings, researchers noted that most patients felt mentally better after surgery. In fact, some participants also noted enhanced moods even six to 12 months post their surgery. However, this was not the case among all participants. Some reported that negative mood swings started creeping in six to 12 months post-surgery. About 3.7 people said they felt even more depressed 12 months after the surgery. Another 13.1 percent reported an increase in depression symptoms between 6 and 12 months after surgery.
"The majority of patients whose mood had worsened discernibly experienced these mood changes between six and 12 months post-surgery, suggesting this may be a critical period for early detection and intervention, as needed," explained Ivezaj in a press statement.
"The increases in symptoms of depression are also notable given that they were associated with other difficulties including lower self-esteem and social functioning," added Grilo.
According to the NHS Information Centre, demand for weight loss operations is rising rapidly. In 2006, there were 858 procedures. These rose tenfold to 8,794 in 2011.
To be eligible for surgery on the NHS, people must have a BMI of over 40, or a BMI between 35 and 40 and also suffering one or more obesity-related diseases such as diabetes.
NHS hospitals are doubling the number of weight-loss operations and appointing obesity surgeons to keep pace with the flood of morbidly obese patients requiring surgery, plus the "revision" surgical procedures being performed to correct weight-loss operations that go wrong. Revision surgery is known to be the riskiest of all. It's done on very ill patients so has the highest risk of death and long-term illness.
The National Bariatric Surgery Registry suggests serious complications occur in only 2.6 percent of cases with three post-operative in-hospital deaths in 2013 as a result of weight-loss surgery. But a reliable 2012 study put the risks much higher. No fewer than one in 10 operations results in significant problems and at least 29 deaths have occurred over a three-year period.
The inquiry by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death found that one-third of patients had poor post-op care and monitoring. Bertie Lee, who led the report, says the difficulties are worsened by "lack of thoughtful pre-operative assessment and the failure to do careful post-operative follow-up".
The current study was published online in the journal Obesity Surgery.
