Previous bariatric surgery increases postoperative morbidity after sleeve gastrectomy for morbid obesity

Sleeve gastrectomy (SG) has been used as the first step of a staged malabsorptive procedure for high-risk patients. More recently SG was proposed as an stand alone procedure in the treatment of morbidly obese patients. The aim of this study is to analyze perioperative outcome of morbid obese patients after SG.

301 patients, 201 women and 100 men, undergoing SG were retrospectively analyzed. SG was performed by 17 surgeons all member of the Club Coelio. The mean BMI was 44.7kg/m2 (27.4-70.3 kg/m2). 34 patients (11.3%) of our series had SG as revisional surgery. These revisional procedures consisted of 32 conversions from gastric banding, 1 conversion from vertical gastroplasty (VBG) and 1 from transoral endoscopic gastroplasty. Among the 32 patients that had revisional SG after a gastric banding, 13 bands were removed at least 3 months before the revisional SG and 19 bands were removed during the SG procedure. Endpoints were perioperative morbidity and mortality and potential risk factors for complications, mainly per or postoperative bleeding or leakage.

Overall mortality was 0% and morbidity was 10.3%. Perioperative bleeding occurred in 10 patients (3.3%), leakage in 12 patients (4%) patients and stenosis in 3 patients (1%). The risk of leakage was significantly higher after revisional bariatric surgery and in case of gastric perforation during surgery (p = 0.0001). Previous gastric banding is also associated with a higher risk of postoperative bleeding (p = 0.0006).

SG can be safely performed but patients and surgeons must be aware of a higher risk of postoperative complications when SG is proposed as a revisional surgery.