The following is a summary of “Maternal and neonatal outcome of women before vs. after bariatric surgery: A single tertiary center experience” published in the November 2022 issue of Surgery by Hazan et al.
Obesity raises the risk of preterm and post-term delivery, small and large for gestational (SGA/LGA), congenital abnormalities, and perinatal death in the short term. With regard to their counterparts who gave birth after BS, researchers for a study sought to compare the maternal and neonatal outcomes of women with morbid obesity who gave birth before BS.
They made use of data from hospital archives that were taken out in accordance with ICD-9 codes. Patients were split into 2 groups: those who became pregnant after the BS and those who were pregnant before the BS. All female patients with BS of any kind accessed their obstetric records before or after the operation. The length of the hospital stay, clinical characteristics, background information, and information about the surgical bariatric operations, as well and birth, and obstetric factors, were obtained.
Over 149 obese women, 104 gave birth before the birth date (group I) and 45 delivered beyond the birth date (group II). Diabetes mellitus was the most prevalent comorbidity, present in 67% of the women had birth prior to BS. Women who had BS previously had a longer gestation period than those who had BS later (P = 0.015). Preeclampsia (P = 0.043), gestational diabetes (P = 0.064), and anemia (P = 0.038) were more common in women who gave birth before BS compared to those who did so after BS. Neonatal birth weight (P< 0.001) was greater in women who gave delivery before BS, and there were more preterm membrane rupture instances (14%, P< 0.018) and a disproportionately high number of SGAs. A multivariate examination of the data suggested that age was correlated but not causal.
Since it was a tiny retrospective research, selection bias might have affected the results’ accuracy. However, for morbidly obese women of reproductive age, losing weight has obvious health benefits, and BS had a crucial role to play in this group.
Reference: americanjournalofsurgery.com/article/S0002-9610(22)00487-1/fulltext
