Weight-loss surgery may cut mortality rate in obese people

Obese people who avoid undertaking a weight-loss surgery are at a greater risk of dying than those who take it, a new study suggests.

Christina Persson from University of Gothenburg in Sweden and colleagues studied 48,693 obese patient, aged 18-74 years. Out of those patients, 22,581 underwent bariatric surgery (gastric bypass 92.8 per cent) while 26,112 obese patients did not undergo surgery.

The mortality rate was higher in the non-surgical group (4.21 per cent) compared to the surgical group (1.1 percent). This means there were 7.7 vs 2.1 deaths per 1000 people per year, researchers said. Mean follow-up time for the surgical group was 5.4 years and 5.5 for the non-surgical group.

The overall mortality decreased by 57 per cent in the surgery group compared with the non-surgical group, researchers



said. The most common cause of death in the non-surgical group was cardiovascular disease, followed by cancer.

In the surgical obese patients, the most common cause of death was external causes of mortality (such as accidents and suicide), followed by cardiovascular disease and cancer, researchers said.

Although accidents and suicide were the main causes of death in the surgical group, the incidence of death from these causes was still lower than in the non-surgical group, they said.

"This population-based cohort observational study indicates that the overall all-cause mortality is considerably lower among obese individuals who undergo bariatric surgery compared to non-surgical obese individuals, and the differences lies mainly in cardiovascular disease and cancer," researchers said.