What are the rates of early (<30-day) major complications, including myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism, following bariatric surgery?
Early major complications after bariatric surgery, including myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism, are relatively rare, with rates under 1.55%.
The effectiveness of bariatric surgery has been well-studied. However, complications after bariatric surgery have been understudied. This review assesses -2 . Less than 30-d anastomotic leak rate was 1.15%; myocardial infarction rate was 0.37%; pulmonary embolism rate was 1.17%. Among all patients, mortality rate following anastomotic leak, myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism was 0.12%, 0.37% and 0.18%, respectively. Among surgical procedures, <30-d after surgery, sleeve gastrectomy (1.21% 95% confidence interval, 0.23-2.19%) had higher anastomotic leak rate than gastric bypass (1.14% 95% confidence interval, 0.84-1.43%); gastric bypass had higher rates of myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism than adjustable gastric banding or sleeve gastrectomy. During the review, we found that the quality of complication reporting is lower than the reporting of other outcomes. In summary, <30-d rates of the three major complications after either one of the procedures range from 0% to 1.55%. Mortality following these complications ranges from 0% to 0.64%. Future studies reporting complications after bariatric surgery should improve their reporting quality.
Chang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.