A recent study examined the records of a large number of people who had undergone gastric bypass surgery in the 10 years from 1995 to 2004 and reported that in the region of one percent of patients died within twelve months of surgery and some 6 percent died within 5 years. When these statistics had been adjusted to take account of age and sex and matched against figures for the population at large they were found to be fairly high. So just what does this say about the ability of gastric bypass surgery to reduce the general risk to our health?

If we are to answer this particular question we need to look beyond the headline numbers and discover just why these deaths occurred and where the real variation lies between the population at large and obesity patients.

When we examine the breakdown of the numbers two things in particular stand out.

The first is the number of people whose deaths resulted from heart disease which was the leading cause of death in the obesity patients and is well higher than that found in the population as a whole.

The second is the number of deaths that resulted from suicide and from drug overdoses that, while not officially classed as suicide, must nonetheless raise the question of whether or not such overdoses were truly accidents. Within the population at large you would expect to see some 2 deaths from suicide in a group of the same size as the study group and yet the study group showed a total of 30 deaths from suicide and drug overdoses.

When we look at these results and consider them alongside our wider knowledge of people undergoing gastric bypass surgery then we may possibly understand this variation at least in part.

Despite the fact that gastric bypass surgery is frequently extremely successful it is often not performed until people are suffering from other conditions or comorbidities and, although surgery will cure a number of these problems and reduce the risk from others, many people still remain at some risk following surgery. For example, in many cases patients remain troubled by things like high blood pressure and diabetes and it is possibly not surprising that this section of the population has a higher risk of heart disease.

Also, while bariatric surgery may lead to a significant loss in weight many patients are still very much overweight for a long time following surgery and some will stay that way for months or years to come.

Lastly, the lifestyle changes that follow surgery can be dramatic and many people find that depression sets in the weeks following their operation. It is a fact that a great deal of attention is paid to the physical affects of obesity surgery and the requirement for things like a strict 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 show the extent to which this explanation is valid but there should be little doubt that improvements to follow-up care for gastric bypass surgery patients could go a long way towards finding a solution for this anomaly.