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Bariatric Surgery

Is there a link between post-bariatric surgery hypoglycemia and the increased risk of external-cause mortality?

International Journal of Obesity volume 47, pages 659–660 (2023)Cite this article

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The prevalence of obesity increases over the world along with its serious health implications. Currently, bariatric surgery (BS) is the most effective treatment to achieve and maintain significant long-term weight-loss in people with obesity. A recent large long-term follow-up observational study (up to 40 years), strongly supports the benefit of BS in people who have obesity and severe obesity, with an impressive reduction of all-cause mortality in individuals who underwent BS compared to age, sex and body-mass index (BMI) matched non-operated participants (hazard ratio, 0.84; 95% CI: 0.79–0.90; p < 0.001) [1]. In addition, the authors found a 29%, 43 and 72% reduction of CVD, cancer and diabetes-related mortality in the post- operated participants. However, there was a troublesome finding of excess mortality due to external causes such as accidents, homicide and suicide, driven mainly by an increase in suicide (hazard ratio 2.35; 95% CI 1.87–2.95; p < 0.001). This excess suicide risk was found in males and females and was especially high in the 18–34 age-group (HR, 5.08; 95% CI: 1.97–13.09; p = 0.001) [1]. These findings are in accordance with data from previous studies that showed similar increased mortality due to external causes, depression and alcohol-abuse in subjects who underwent BS [2, 3].

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Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Disease Institute, Kaplan Medical Center, Rehovot, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Faculty of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel

    Viviana Ostrovsky & Taiba Zornitzki

  2. Diabetes Institute, Meuhedet Medical Service, Rehovot, Faculty of Medicine Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Hilla Knobler

Authors
  1. Viviana Ostrovsky
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  2. Hilla Knobler
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  3. Taiba Zornitzki
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Contributions

VO. Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, analysis and interpretation of data, writing—original draft, editing. HK. Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, analysis and interpretation of data, review. TZ. Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, analysis and interpretation of data, review.

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Correspondence to Viviana Ostrovsky.

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Ostrovsky, V., Knobler, H. & Zornitzki, T. Is there a link between post-bariatric surgery hypoglycemia and the increased risk of external-cause mortality?. Int J Obes 47, 659–660 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-023-01319-z

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