Post-Bariatric Body Recontouring and Maintained Weight Loss

Introduction: Bariatric surgery has a measurably significant positive impact on patient morbidity and mortality. Even with technical and safety advancements, long-term success of these procedures may still be limited by recidivism. There is a high incidence of weight gain following these procedures. Many post-bariatric surgery patients are motivated to undergo aesthetic surgery, including body recontouring procedures. We reviewed our institution’s experience of body recontouring surgery following bariatric surgery to determine if long term reduction in Body Mass Index (BMI) was maintained compared with those patients who did not have further surgery.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of our bariatric surgery database from 2003 through 2013 was queried for patients who subsequently had body contouring. Demographic and surgical factors were analyzed.  The primary outcome measures included pre-bariatric surgery BMI’s with BMI’s 2.5 years post bariatric surgery.

Results:  Based on our inclusion criteria, a total of 94 patients were captured who underwent bariatric surgery; with 47 patients undergoing subsequently contouring procedures.  Of the patients that underwent contouring surgery, the average decrease in BMI was 18.24 at 2.5 years. The decrease in BMI of the control cohort was 12.45 at 2.5 years. This difference was statistically significant (p=0.004).

Conclusion: Our study showed that patients that had body contouring procedures following bariatric surgeries were able to have a significantly greater decrease in their BMI’s after 2.5 years post-bariatric surgery than a control cohort. These findings suggest that aesthetic procedures following bariatric surgeries may contribute to long term improvement of outcomes following bariatric surgery. Future studies will examine changes in BMI at 5 years post bariatric surgery, as well as how different types of contouring procedures may maintain weight loss.