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Obesity is now a global public health issue and has nearly doubled worldwide since 1980. Bariatric surgery is on the rise, but little focus has been placed on the quality impacts of surgery. The purpose of this study is to explore our knowledge with respect to the quantity and quality of bariatric surgery from our last ten years’ experiences.
The main focus of this work is to gain an understanding of the successes and challenges faced before and after surgery with the advances in surgical techniques and technologies available for its treatment. We outline the different options in bariatric surgery and summarize the recommendations for selecting and assessing potential candidates before proceeding to surgery.
Standardization of bariatric metabolic procedures provides patients with better quality of life and a longer lifespan. For the enhancement of quality, a fellowship programme and the Virtual Bariatric University (VBU) have started to provide knowledge on bariatric (weight loss) surgery to all minimal-access surgeons. We constantly provide data on post-surgical outcomes and evaluate the psychosocial and economic effects of bariatric surgery. Uniform measurement is a fundamental requirement to understand the elements in each procedure that correlate with beneficial weight loss and metabolic effects.
Our experiences revealed that standardization and changes to improve care based on the data analysis are key metrics to establish whether the final anatomic configuration following a procedure strengthens bariatric surgical practice, research, and patient outcomes.