Archived material from the LABS study participant website (via web.archive.org, snapshot of 2012-08-25). Historical document — links and contacts may be outdated.
Results
Participants like you have been helping with the LABS study since 2005. Whether you are one year or five years from your original weight loss surgery, we know that you are interested in hearing results about the study. We wait until all participants have been seen at a given visit until we publish on those data. To date, we have only released data on findings at the time of surgery (baseline) or within 30 days of surgery.
Here is a summary of what we have learned so far:
1. Bariatric surgery is safer than once believed. Many people considering weight loss surgery are concerned about how safe the procedure is and what sort of complications could arise. The LABS study found that for every 1000 surgery patients, three died within 30 days of surgery and 43 had a major complication. This means that the risk of dying after surgery is 0.3%. This rate is considerably lower than the approximately 20 deaths per 1000 patients reported by other studies. The LABS study also found that major problems such as blood clots occurred in approximately 4% of patients. Problems were more likely to occur on participants with a history of blood clots, those who have sleep apnea or have trouble walking 200 feet. Information like this is extremely important to people who are considering whether or not to have surgery. If you have a friend or loved one considering the surgery, you may want to tell them about this information which was first published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the most widely-read medical magazine in the world.
2. There is a connection between body mass index (BMI) and other surgical risk factors. Patients with higher BMI (classified as being >60) are more likely to have a history of other health conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma or sleep apnea. The presence of these conditions may impact how well they do after the surgery. For instance, participants who have these conditions may lose less weight or be more likely to have problems after surgery. A finding like this helps guide future patients on what they might expect after surgery and can help them to make a better decision about whether or not surgery is right for them.
3. When it comes to physical activity, there is a lot of variation among LABS participants. Over 1000 LABS participants wore a StepWatch Activity Monitor (SAM) prior to surgery. Data from 757 participants who wore the monitor10 hours or more per day for at least 3 days found that participants took, on average, 7569 steps/day. However, activity levels (based on steps/day) varied greatly.. Data showed that 20% of participants were classified as sedentary (walked less than 5000 steps/day), 34% were low active (5000-<7500 steps/day), 27% were somewhat active (7,500-<10,000 steps/day), and 20% were active or highly active (10,000 or more steps/day). Almost half of participants walked enough (at least 7,500 steps/day) to gain measurable health benefits from their activity. To maintain a healthy weight, adults need to walk 10,000-12,000 steps/day, and possibly more to maintain weight loss after surgery. If you are asked to wear the SAM monitor at one of your follow-up visits, we encourage you to do so as this data will help inform us about how physical activity changes after surgery and what kind of impact it may have on health and weight loss.
4. Prior to surgery, reproductive health problems such as infertility are more common among LABS female participants compared to the general U.S. population. Before surgery, 13% of women participating in LABS-2 reported that they had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which is almost twice the rate of PCOS in the general female population (7%). 42% of LABS-2 participants who had ever tried to become pregnant experienced a period of infertility. Among these women,61% went on to have a live birth, while 39% did not. 17% of all reported pregnancies ended in miscarriage, a rate slightly higher than the 12% rate in the general U.S. population. However, the still birth rate among LABS-2 participants was much higher than the rate in the general U.S. population (13.2 vs. 6.2 still births per 1,000 live births). Women who were obese by the time they were 18 years old were more likely to report PCOS and infertility compared to women who became obese later in life. Future pregnancy is important to about one third of LABS female participants who are younger than 45 years old. Reproductive health data is collected at every annual LABS visit so that we will be able to examine how reproductive health changes after surgery.
Since all participants have now completed their one year annual LABS visit, we look forward to releasing that information soon. Some of the findings that we intend to release this year include information on weight loss, sleep apnea, heart disease risk and 1-year change in physical activity.
We thank you for your participation in this important study and hope that you will remain in close contact with your local LABS team to continue to inform the public about life after bariatric surgery.
For more information on our study, please visit the archived LABS participant website.