The effect of bariatric surgery on quality and postoperative life expectancy: a literature review.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To study the effect of bariatric surgery on postoperative quality of life and analyze the comparison between surgical outcomes in relation to the surgical technique used. METHODOLOGY: Narrative analysis of articles selected from the PubMed platform, over the last 10 years (2013-2023), in English and Portuguese, totaling 136 results. All articles considered irrelevant to the narrative were excluded, selecting 9 of these articles for the final analysis of the study. RESULTS/DISCUSSION: A total of 174,772 participants were evaluated, finding that gastric bypass reduces the long-term mortality risk rate by 49.2% and increases average life expectancy by 6.1 years compared to current conservative treatments. An observational study concluded that after gastrectomy, the analyzed patients presented remission of associated comorbidities and improvement in general health conditions. Moreover, 3 studies with a duration of 6 to 10 years indicated that bariatric procedures are associated with improvements in both generic and obesity-specific quality of life measures, including a significant improvement in the mental health of patients with grade I obesity. Although all the articles pointed to an increase in quality and life expectancy after surgery, one article highlighted the difficulty of comparing these measures between different types of bariatric operations. CONCLUSION: Surgical treatment for obesity reduction leads to significant improvements in the reduction of associated comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, depression, and anxiety disorders. It was also found that the treatments with the highest success rates in postoperative weight loss were those associated with multiprofessional support, including psychological, nutritional, and physical activity guidance.