Pattern Of Your Weight Loss Might Help You Anticipate The Pattern Of Changes In Your Quality Of Life

It’s well-known that weight loss affects the patient’s quality of life in a variety of ways, including decreasing the risk of morbidity and mortality. However, new research published in the Journal of Annals of Medicine and Surgery, January 2018, suggests that a significant change in a parallel pattern to the extent that excess weight loss was noticed in the quality of life of morbidly obese patients after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy.

A research team looked at the patterns of weight loss after sleeve gastrectomy and how it affected the quality of life (QoL).

Obesity is a worldwide medical issue, achieving pestilence status and is rapidly turning into a noteworthy general concern for wellbeing. Morbid obesity is related to illnesses and medical conditions such as Type 2 diabetes mellitus, coronary illness, stroke, hypertension and malignancies, joint degeneration, liver disorders, venous stasis, and urinary incontinence.

The exponential increment in obesity worldwide has brought the absence of compelling techniques for treatment or prevention to the forefront of public awareness. Customary strategies for weight reduction, such as a change in eating routines and exercise, are less compelling than weight loss surgery among the corpulent populace. Surgery alone brings about sustained weight reduction for super-obese patients, serving as a successful means in the treatment of gruesome obesity, prompting sturdy, long-term weight reduction and improving higher weight-related factors.

Bariatric surgery is linked to a moderately low number of complexities and appears to bring about a decrease in mortality hazards, due to the determination of comorbidities. Since its presentation, the number of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomies (LSG) has increased, expanding reliability as a remaining solitary essential bariatric method. The relative straightforwardness of the operation, the absence of a foreign body or requirement for numerous postoperative changes, and a worthy safety profile are highlights that interest numerous patients and bariatric specialists.

Notwithstanding weight reduction, the procedure enhances wellbeing understanding as far as metabolic, macrovascular, and microvascular illnesses and brings about better personal satisfaction, alongside psychosocial prosperity. LSG also enhances strolling and a scope of movement of the joints, encouraging a physical movement in obese patients that might cause stamped weight reduction after bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery is also related to an improvement in insulin achievement, fat tissue reactive substances, and QoL.

Obesity is widely known as a major health risk factor, and bariatric surgery has proved to be a significantly effective and safe procedure, providing results in sustainable and effective reduction in body weight, on a long-term basis, which provides meaningful weight loss and improvement in the quality of life, which is an effective alternative to current standard procedures. The ultimate goal of bariatric surgery is weight loss and the resolution of obesity-related comorbidities to improve psychosocial functioning and QoL in morbidly obese patients.

QoL will be improved after surgery because surgical treatment achieves significant weight loss, which may be seen as early as 3 months after surgery. By 6 months after surgery, patients may improve to the extent that they achieve the same quality of life scores as the reference population. Searching literature, one may feel that there is a lack of adequate prospective data on QoL in patients undergoing laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, which made it worthy to explore this aspect of LSG. The patients in the current work have lost their EW after 3, 6, and 12 months, respectively.

The more and sustained the weight loss is, the greater the improvement in QOL will be. After a significant weight reduction between 3 and 6 months following surgery, with better body image, more mobility, and less teasing by others, individuals had an improved QoL in all indicated areas. Weight reduction was the cause of positive changes in QoL. The patients started losing weight from the first week after the operation; their weight loss became noticeable as early as 3 months and continued. Significant improvements showed in QoL during this period in a parallel pattern to the extent of the EWL. Some of the patients regained up to 5 kilograms of their weight in the last 6 months of the year of follow-up, as losing weight slowed in the last 6 months of that year of evaluation.

Meanwhile, improvement in their QoL slowed, for example, feelings of happiness declined and their appetite increased, which was parallel to the decline in loss of excess weight.

Half of the patients reported being unhappy before the operation, but twelve months later (N=31, 77.5%) of them became much happier. Regarding satisfaction with body image, noticeable improvement occurred, and (N=36, 90%)  of them were satisfied with their new body. Initially, most participants had low self-esteem and (N27, 67.5 % )of the patients reported having no self-esteem, but 12 months after the operation (N=35, 87.5%) felt a great improvement in their self-esteem (p-value = 0.040). A significant decrease in appetite was also noticed in (N=39, 97.5%) of the patients after 12 months.

These findings are described in the article entitled Pattern of changes in quality of life of obese patients after sleeve gastrectomy in Sulaimani province – Kurdistan-Iraq, based on 4 years experience in two bariatric centers, recently published in the journal Annals of Medicine and Surgery. This work was conducted by Hiwa Omer Ahmed from the University of Sulaimani.