Introduction: Bariatric surgery has rapidly become an established and accepted treatment for morbid obesity. Bariatric surgery is offered when patients fail to attain a significant and sustainable weight loss using behavioral changes and life style modifications. In most bariatric centers, patients are started on a supervised diet to achieve some weight loss prior to undergoing weight loss surgery. Many investigators have shown that preoperative weight loss results in shorter operative time, decreased length of hospital stay and decreased intraoperative blood loss. In the Carolinas weight management and wellness center at Carolinas Medical Center, patients are started on a high protein, low carbohydrate liquid diet two weeks prior to surgery. The dietary goals are 1300 calories per day with a daily intake of 90 to 120 grams and less than 100 grams of carbohydrate. We hypothesize that patients who elect to undergo a Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) are more motivated to exercise and adhere to our liquid diet than patients who elect to undergo a Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y-Gastric-Bypass (LRYGB).This study was designed to determine if there is a difference in the amount of weight loss achieved preoperatively between patients undergoing LAGB and those undergoing LRYGB. Methods: A retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data was performed. Our demographics included weight, Body Mass Index (BMI) and amount of weight loss prior to the start of the liquid diet and the day of surgery. For both groups, the number of days between the preoperative measurements and the measurements on the day of surgery ranged from 10 to 28 days with an average of 17.3 days. We had a total of 296 patients.Our results are shown in the table below:
Age |
Pre-op weight(mean) lbs |
Initial BMI |
Weight after 2 week liquid diet(mean) lbs |
%EWL | |
LAGB n=82 |
45.88 |
273.15 |
44.56 | 264.89 | 7.04 |
LRYGB n=214 |
42.61 |
281.18 |
46.33 | 271.37 | 7.81 |
T-Test | p=0.1883 |
Our results show that there is no difference in %EWL achieved after being on a two week liquid diet between patients undergoing LAGB vs LRYGB. Conclusion: The choice of weight loss procedure has no impact on the %EWL achieved prior to undergoing weight loss surgery.
Session: Poster
Program Number: P073