Background: Recent Research evidences from across the world indicate the usefulness of bariatric surgery in improving the immunological co-morbidities in patients with morbid obesity.
Aim: The aim of the study was to evaluate the outcome from bariatric surgery in patients presenting with diabetes mellitus and or morbid obesity with immunological co-morbidities.
Methods: It was a retrospective cross-sectional study. Study included patients with morbid obesity with immunological co-morbidities, and additional co- morbidity of type 2 diabetes mellitus in about one third of the cases, who had undergone bariatric surgery during the period 2014-2016 at our center. Patient demographics, preoperative data, and follow-up data were collected and analyzed. Patients were followed for assessing the outcome in terms of BMI and dependency on medications to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure.
Results: The study included 23 patients (52% female and 48% male). Bariatric surgery was effective in all the patients (except one) in weight reduction. Significant reduction in weight and BMI was observed (p < 0.05). The recent follow-up of these patients showed that the mean BMI of the study group decreased significantly, 34.4% patients had attained normal BMI ≤ 25 kg/m2. Three-month follow-up indicated that 55.56% were not dependent on medications. At 1-year follow-up, 94.4% patients were without any dependency on immunosuppressive medications. Complications included a reversal of surgery and a case of mortality.
Conclusion: The results of our study have shown that immune-compromised patients can undergo bariatric surgery with good weight loss results and improvement in co-morbidities.
Keywords: BMI; Bariatric surgery; HIV; Immunocompromised; Obesity; Psoriasis.