Risk of Heart Failure in Obese Patients With and Without Bariatric Surgery in Sweden—A Registry-Based Study

BACKGROUND: Obesity is a known risk factor for heart failure. The prevalence of both conditions has increased in Sweden during the past several decades. Obesity surgery has been shown to improve cardiac function. We therefore investigated whether the risk of heart failure was lower in obese patients after bariatric surgery compared with obese patients without surgical intervention. METHODS AND RESULTS: From the Swedish National Patient Registry. we created a cohort including 47,859 patients aged 18-74 years with a primary diagnosis of obesity from 2000 to 2011. Of these, 22,295 (46.6%) underwent bariatric surgery (mean age 40.7 (standard deviation [SD] 10.7) years, 75.9% female). There were 25,564 (53.4%) nonsurgical obese patients (mean age 44.3 (SD 13.2) years, 66.8% female). Patients who underwent bariatric surgery had a markedly reduced risk of heart failure compared with nonsurgical obese patients (age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.37, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.29-0.46). The lower risk persisted after further adjustment for baseline differences in known risk factors for heart failure (HR 0.37, 95% CI 0.30-0.46). CONCLUSION: Patients who underwent bariatric surgery had a reduced risk of heart failure after surgery compared with nonsurgical obese patients.