A study published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that adults with severe obesity had greater initial and sustained weight loss with gastric bypass surgery compared to sleeve gastrectomy or adjustable gastric banding surgery.
The largest, long-term national study of bariatric surgery to date was led by Kaiser Permanente and involved two UNMC physician/researchers.
The findings are important because severe obesity affects more than 15 percent of U.S. adults.
The study, which compared the three most common operations, included more than 46,000 patients at 41 health systems in 11 Clinical Data Research Networks nationwide.
Bariatric surgeons can use various operations to help people lose weight by making changes to their digestive system. The study compared one-, three- and five-year results from the three most commonly performed weight-loss operations: gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy and adjustable gastric banding.
James McClay, M.D., UNMC associate professor of emergency medicine and chair of the UNMC Biomedical Informatics Program, and Corrigan McBride, M.D., UNMC professor of surgery, were participants in the study. Both see patients at Nebraska Medicine, UNMC’s primary clinical partner.
“The Bariatric Center at Nebraska Medicine and the researchers of UNMC are very proud participants in this collaborative study,” Dr. McBride said. “The study is very important for patients considering bariatric surgery because it shows that both laparoscopic gastric bypass and laparoscopic sleeve surgeries have durable long-term weight loss and give us good predictions of weight loss.”
The new results are among the first to be produced using the resources of PCORnet®, an innovative initiative funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (or PCORI). PCORnet® is designed to produce clinical insights faster and less expensively than traditional clinical studies. It involves multiple individual networks that together represent more than 100 million patients.
The network securely collects health information during routine care – not including data that could help identify individuals – to produce real-world evidence with outcomes that matter to patients, who are full partners in this research.
“This study showcases the power of PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, to deliver on its goal to produce faster, less costly, and more meaningful research results than traditional clinical trials,” Dr. McClay said. “Working together we were able to securely assess de-identified health information collected during routine care to compare the outcomes of each weight loss procedure.”