QUALITY OF LIFE AFTER GASTRIC BANDING AND GASTRIC BY-PASS FOR MORBID OBESITY: A PROSPECTIVE COMPARISON.

Introduction Among bariatric surgery evaluation criteria, improvement in quality of life (QoL) surely represents the most important. However, the lack of reliable evaluation models has significantly limited the research in this field. The aim of this study is to prospectively compare QoL after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) Methods 35 patients submitted to RYGB at Parma Hospital and 35 patients submitted to LAGB at the “Clinica Città di Parma” were enrolled in the study. Patients were prospectively submitted to one preoperative and 4 postoperative (1, 3, 6 and 12 months) clinical evaluations including two psychodiagnostic tests: the Short Form 36 (SF-36) testing the quality of life and the Bariatric Surgery Satisfaction Questionnaire (BSSQ) assessing the satisfaction for the intervention. Results Both interventions produced a significant amelioration of biometric and clinical data (significantly higher for RYGB). While at early controls no significant difference in SF-36 was detected among the groups, at 12-month control QoL resulted as being significantly better for RYGB patients, particularly in pain (p:0.002), role limitation (p:0.005) and social activity (p:0.002) domains. Satisfaction for surgery was slightly higher for LAGB at early controls, significantly higher for RYGB at 12 months (p:0.004). Conclusions RYGB seems to produce, along with a higher weight loss and comorbidity resolution, a higher QoL increase, becoming more evident starting from 6 months postoperatively, and seemingly independent of weight loss.