Bariatric surgery improves the heart

Editor's Note

Bariatric surgery provides more benefits for obese patients than weight loss; it also reverses subclinical heart dysfunction, finds this study presented December 5 at EuroEcho 2019, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology in Vienna, Austria.

The study included 38 obese patients who had bariatric surgery and 19 who remained on the waiting list. At 6 months, surgery patients had lost 26% of their total body weight, and patients on the waiting list remained the same.

Rates of comorbidities were significantly lower in the surgery group than the waiting group: hypertension (30% vs 61%), dyslipidemia (5% vs 42%), and type 2 diabetes (13% vs 40%).

A total of 22 (58%) patients in the surgery group had subclinical heart disease at the beginning of the study. At 6 months after surgery, subclinical heart function had normalized in 82%, and it worsened in 53% of patients on the waiting list.

Though bariatric surgery was conceived for weight loss, this study finds that it may also reverse subclinical heart dysfunction, the author says.