Zeitschrift für Adipositas- und Gewichtsverlusttherapie

Abstrakt

Assessment of Bariatric Surgery Patients in Lebanon: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study

Iqbal Fahs1*, Marwan Akel, Mohamad Rahal, Michelle Cherfan, Mariam and Jihan Safwan

Introduction: Obesity is considered a global epidemic disease with detrimental consequences. Bariatric surgery is a viable option for weight loss for patients with morbid obesity. This study sought to assess weight variation and supplements and medication use among bariatric surgery patients in Lebanon.
Methods: A total of 300 bariatric patients' ≥ 18 years of age were randomly enrolled to fill a questionnaire in English or Arabic, from all over Lebanese districts. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS software (Version 23.0)
Results: Most patients were in the age category of less than 30 years of age (43.3%). Hypertension was the most reported comorbidity (15%), followed by Diabetes Mellitus (11.3%) and anaemia (11%). Three types of surgeries were reported with sleeve gastrectomy being the most performed (57.7%), followed by roux-en-y gastric bypass (27%) and gastric banding (15.3%). Weight loss was more common among sleeve gastrectomy patients for all ranges of weight variation except for >50 kg weight loss category where roux-en-Y bypass was associated with more weight loss (p<0.0001). Those with higher socio-economical levels (expβ=7.319, 95% CI 1.477-36.265, P=0.015), higher educational levels (expβ=5.967, 95% CI 1.386-25.683, P=0.016), smokers (expβ=5.772, 95% CI 1.471-22.650, P=0.012) and sleeve gastrectomy patients (expβ=8.229, 95% CI 2.101-32.229, P=0.002) were significantly more likely to have more weight loss. Among the mineral and vitamin supplements iron (42.3%) was the most commonly used, whereas PPIs ranked first (42.3%) among the used medications.
Conclusion: Sleeve gastrectomy was the most common bariatric surgery done in Lebanon and associated with the most postoperative weight loss. Vitamin and mineral supplements and PPIs were consumed by almost half of the patients. Despite these issues, larger scale follow-up studies are needed to assess these patients in order to establish further areas of improvements.