Does Time of Year Affect Adverse Events After Bariatric Surgery?

Adverse events after bariatric surgery are influenced by the seasons of the year, according to a recent analysis.

For their study, the researchers used data from the Premier Healthcare Database to identify obese patients aged 20 years or older who had undergone weight loss surgeries from 2011 to 2014 (N = 69,365).

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Adverse outcomes including hospital mortality, sepsis, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and pulmonary embolism were evaluated against season of surgery using logistic regression.

Results of the analysis showed the overall rates to be 0.27% for hospital mortality, 0.16% for DVT, 0.10% for pulmonary embolism, and 0.20% for sepsis.

For DVT, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) was 2.68 for autumn and 2.26 for winter, compared with summertime.

For sepsis, the adjusted OR was 1.83 for spring, compared with summertime.

However, hospital mortality and pulmonary embolism did not show statistically significant seasonality patterns.

“DVT and sepsis are more likely to occur in colder seasons compared with the summer season, although the crude rates of these adverse events were low,” the researchers concluded.

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Hu Q, Shi L, Chen L, et al. Seasonality in the adverse outcomes in weight loss surgeries. 2018;14(3):291-296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soard.2017.11.029.