Bariatric surgery in obese patients with ventricular assist devices

Patients with end-stage heart failure (ESHF) treated with ventricular assist devices (VADs) tend to gain weight, which may prevent them from receiving heart transplantation (HT) if their body mass index (BMI) reaches ≥ 35 kg/m². The objective was to synthesize all cases available in the literature and describe the most important outcomes of bariatric surgery (BS) in VAD patients, including BMI trends, reaching a BMI < 35 kg/m², listing for HT, achieving HT, myocardial recovery, and mortality. These data were obtained for an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis and include available IPD for every case in the scientific literature describing VAD patients undergoing BS during VAD support with documented postoperative BMI (and time of measurement) during follow-up.

These data include baseline, periprocedural, and long-term outcomes for the 29 patients meeting selection criteria. The composite outcome includes reaching a BMI < 35 kg/m², listing for HT, receiving HT, and myocardial recovery, indicating significant BMI loss associated with major ESHF outcomes. As multiple centers are becoming more experienced in this field, the present data can be merged with their databases to form larger samples that will allow to perform further statistical analysis to identify outcome predictors and improve clinical protocols and outcomes.