The Effect of GLP-1 on the Incidence of Cardiovascular Events Compared to Bariatric Surgery: Systematic Review

Introduction:Worldwide obesity has become one of the most common public health concerns.In addition to being an increased mortality risk factor, it also contributes to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and some types of cancer.On aiming to reduce body mass index multiple measures are scientifically investigated such as lifestyle modification, pharmacological and surgical therapy.This review took a critical look on evaluating the scientific evidence of GLP-1 Vs bariatric surgery and the outcome of cardiovascular events.Methods: PubMed, Google Scholar and Research Gate were searched for recent studies published in the period between 2010 and 2021.Results: A total of 16 studies with 283983 patients were included in this review.Of these, 77316 patients were in the intervention groups representing 27.2% of the overall studied population.Around 9% of patients were in the bariatric surgery group, while 18% were in the GLP-1 group.Nine studies used bariatric surgery as their primary intervention, while seven used GLP-1.The mean age of participants ranged from 32.4 to 66 years. Conclusion:In conclusion, GLP-1 showed similar event rates to the control group for MI and CVD but better stroke outcomes.Moreover, bariatric surgery, across studies demonstrated a significant reduction in the risk of the studied events.Thus, we recommend conducting high-quality trials comparing the two interventions to safely apply the results in everyday practice.