Women have lower 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease after bariatric surgery
After undergoing bariatric surgery, women had a significantly lower 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease than men, according to an analysis of nearly 2,000 patients.
Lead researcher John M. Morton, MD, of the Stanford School of Medicine, and colleagues presented their results Nov. 4 at ObesityWeek 2016 in New Orleans. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and the Obesity Society hosted ObesityWeek 2016.
The researchers noted that most of patients who undergo bariatric surgery are women. They also cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed more than 36 percent of adults were obese from 2011 to 2014, including 38.3 percent of men and 34.3 percent of women. They defined obesity as people who have a body mass index of more than 30.
For this study, the researchers evaluated 1,989 patients who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy at the Stanford BMI Clinic.
At baseline, men and women had significant differences in hemoglobin A1c level, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, homocysteine, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and C-reactive protein.
At 12 months post-surgery, only HDL cholesterol, homocysteine and total cholesterol were significantly different.
At baseline, there were also significant differences between the genders in the percentage of patients with abnormal values for hemoglobin A1c, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, homocysteine, total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol.
At 12 months post-surgery, only HDL cholesterol remained significantly different.
The Framingham Risk Scores at baseline were 17.4 percent for men and 8.6 percent for women, which represented a significant difference. At 12 months post-surgery, the scores were 11.2 percent and 5.1 percent, respectively, which was a significant difference.
At 12 months, men had a 35.6 percent decrease and women had a 41 percent decrease in their 10-year cardiovascular disease risk, which the researchers assessed using the Framingham Risk Score.
“This study shows there is a gender disparity in cardiac outcomes for patients undergoing bariatric surgery,” Morton said in a news release. “The findings suggest that women may have an enhanced mechanism of response to bariatric surgery, which leads to greater normalization of biochemical cardiac risk factors.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.