Christopher W Mangieri, MD, Rebekah J Johnson, MD, Yong U Choi, MD, Joseph C Wood, MD. Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center
Introduction: With the epidemic of obesity within the United States and throughout the world numerous mobile health applications have been designed with the goal of increasing weight loss. This new technology has the potential to focus behavioral modification in a manner that is effective for weight loss. We examined the use of this mobile health technology in our bariatric surgery population to see if there was any effect on weight loss following surgery.
Methods: A prospective randomized control trial RCT was performed using patients who had recently undergone a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) at our institution. A total of 56 patients were enrolled in the RCT with the enrollees divided into a control group that did not use any mobile health application and an experimental group that used a mobile health application (experimental group provided with iPad© minis with the MyFitnessPal© application installed on the devices). The study participants were followed for 6 months from their enrollment. The primary outcome was effect on weight loss as determined by excess body weight loss (%EWL) and excess BMI loss (%EBL). A secondary outcome was the effect on quality of life (QoL) as determined by RAND 36 surveys.
Results: The two groups were statistically identical in regards to patient demographics and post-operative weight loss at baseline; %EWL 37.67% (control) vs 40.07% (experimental) and %EBL 13.50% (control) vs 13.58% (experimental). At 3 and 6 months post enrollment there was no statistically significant difference in weight loss outcomes between the groups. %EWL findings 3 months 74.41% (control) vs 81.41% (experimental) p value 0.49 and 6 months 59.10% (control) vs 71.47% (experimental) p value 0.29. %EBL findings 3 months 28.02% (control) vs 32.15% (experimental) p value 0.21 and 6 months 25.39% (control) vs 27.87% (experimental) p value 0.52. There was also no statistically significant difference in QoL outcomes between the two groups.
Conclusion: While a developing technology with vast potential mobile health applications in our RCT were not found to improve weight loss results following bariatric surgery. The mobile health applications also did not have any correlation with improved QoL outcomes. Unfortunately the results from our RCT place the efficacy of mobile health applications on the same level as self-monitoring dietary and exercise journals which have historically been shown to be ineffective for successful weight loss.
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 80159
Program Number: S015
Presentation Session: Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery
Presentation Type: Podium