Weight Loss Surgery Linked to Lower Mortality Rates Later On
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Jochen Sands/Digital Vision/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Researchers say that weight loss surgery may add years to the lives of morbidly obese patients.
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, bariatric surgery could add years to the lives of obese individuals. Researchers in Seattle studied 2,500 obese veterans who underwent bariatric surgery and compared the data derived from those patients to that of 7,500 similarly obese patients who did not have the surgery.
While the subjects who underwent surgery had a slightly higher mortality rate in the first year after surgery, that changed drastically after 10 years. Ten years after the surgery, 14 percent of patients who had had the surgery were dead, compared to 24 percent of those who had not undergone the surgery.
Patients who did have the surgery likely had increased short-term mortality rates due to the risks inherent with any surgery.
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