Bariatric Surgery in Immunocompromised Patients: Outcomes from One Year Follow-up

Recent Research evidences from across the world indicate the usefulness of bariatric surgery in improving the immunological co-morbidities in patients with morbid obesity.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the outcome from bariatric surgery in patients presenting with diabetes mellitus and or morbid obesity with immunological co-morbidities.

It was a retrospective cross-sectional study. Study included patients with morbid obesity with immunological co-morbidities, and additional co- morbidity of type 2 diabetes mellitus in about one third of the cases, who had undergone bariatric surgery during the period 2014-2016 at our center. Patient demographics, preoperative data, and follow-up data were collected and analyzed. Patients were followed for assessing the outcome in terms of BMI and dependency on medications to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure.

The study included 23 patients (52% female and 48% male). Bariatric surgery was effective in all the patients (except one) in weight reduction. Significant reduction in weight and BMI was observed (p < 0.05). The recent follow-up of these patients showed that the mean BMI of the study group decreased significantly, 34.4% patients had attained normal BMI ≤ 25 kg/m². Three-month follow-up indicated that 55.56% were not dependent on medications. At 1-year follow-up, 94.4% patients were without any dependency on immunosuppressive medications. Complications included a reversal of surgery and a case of mortality.

The results of our study have shown that immune-compromised patients can undergo bariatric surgery with good weight loss results and improvement in co-morbidities.