Early Postoperative Progression to Solid Foods Is Safe After Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass

Background: Even though admission time is reduced with the implementation of various enhanced recovery protocols, many clinics still instruct patients after weight loss surgery to maintain a fluid or minced-food diet for at least 2 weeks postoperatively. We reasoned that with adequate preoperative instructions, including adequate chewing of all foods, early progression to solid foods would not increase the risk of (gastro)enterostomy leakage.

Methods: In December 2010, a new dietary protocol was implemented for all patients undergoing a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, allowing progression to solid foods from 12 h postprocedure onwards. All patients received thorough preoperative eating instructions and eating awareness counselling from a qualified dietician and psychologist. A retrospective study was performed of 936 patients who underwent a primary or redo laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass between January 2011 and June 2014 in our hospital. All 30-day complications, readmissions and reoperations were noted.

Results: No 30-day loss to follow-up occurred. Overall 30-day complication rate was 9.4%, with gastrointestinal leakage occurring in only 0.6%. A low threshold for readmission was maintained due to the short mean admission time of 1.87 days. Readmission rate was 4.8%--mainly for observation of postoperative pain--and 1.8% of our patients required reoperation within 30 days. Mortality was 0.1%. Our results are comparable to results published by other Dutch centres advocating conventional diets, showing no increase in leakage or other complications.

Conclusions: We conclude that early progression to solid foods after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery is a feasible alternative as no increase in complications is observed.