The Effect of Bariatric Surgery on Perioperative Complications after Hysterectomy

To compare intraoperative and 30-day posthysterectomy outcomes between patients who had bariatric surgery before hysterectomy and patients with a body mass index (BMI) >40 kg/m² without a history of bariatric surgery.

A retrospective cohort study.

A tertiary-care, academic medical center.

Patients with a history of bariatric surgery and patients with BMI >40 kg/m² and no previous bariatric surgery who underwent any route of hysterectomy between January 1, 2000, and March 1, 2018.

After exclusion of patients with gynecologic malignancy and bariatric surgery reversal, 223 patients with a history of bariatric surgery were matched at a 1:2 ratio by year of hysterectomy to 446 randomly selected patients with a BMI >40 kg/m² and no bariatric surgery before hysterectomy. Demographics, medical comorbidities, and surgical characteristics were collected by a manual chart review. Chi-square or Fisher's exact tests were used to compare the incidence of intraoperative and 30-day postoperative complications. Polytomous logistic regression was used to estimate the odds of major and minor postoperative complications. Binary logistic regression was used to estimate the odds of any intra- or postoperative complications.

The mean BMI in the bariatric surgery group was 35.2 ± 7.9 kg/m², compared with 46.3 ± 5.6 kg/m² in the control group (p <.01). Fewer patients in the bariatric surgery group had obesity-related comorbidities than the group with no previous bariatric surgery (p <.01). There were lower odds of any intraoperative complication in the bariatric surgery group than in the group with no bariatric surgery (adjusted odds ratio, 0.32; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.13-0.77), after adjusting for relevant confounding factors between groups. However, there was no difference in overall postoperative complications between women who had bariatric surgery and those who did not (adjusted odds ratio, 1.25; 95% CI, 0.82-1.91). When analyzed individually, a higher proportion of patients in the bariatric surgery group had postoperative cuff separation or dehiscence (1.4% [3/223], p = .04) and urinary retention (5.8% [13/223], p <.01). Combining all perioperative complications, we found no significant difference in minor complications, defined as Clavien-Dindo Grade 1 or 2 (adjusted odds ratio, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.68-1.60), major complications, defined as Clavien-Dindo Grade 3 or higher (adjusted odds ratio, 1.25; 95% CI, 0.61-2.54), or combined major and minor perioperative complications (adjusted odds ratio, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.63-1.44) between patients with a history of bariatric surgery and morbidly obese patients with no bariatric surgery before hysterectomy, after adjusting for relevant confounding factors between groups.

Compared with women who had a BMI >40 kg/m², patients with a history of bariatric surgery before hysterectomy had a lower odds of complications during hysterectomy. However, despite lower BMI and fewer obesity-related medical comorbidities, there was no significant difference in posthysterectomy complications and no significant differences in overall major and minor complications.