Five-year results of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy for the treatment of severe obesity.

BACKGROUND: Since 2011, the most used bariatric technique in France has been the sleeve gastrectomy. There are still few studies exploring the medium and long-term results of this technique.

OBJECTIVE: To describe medium-long-term (5 years) results of a cohort of CHU Montpellier experience in sleeve gastrectomy for morbid obesity.

METHODS: All patients that underwent laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) from January 2005 to June 2013 were included in this study.

RESULTS: A total of 1050 patients were operated. 72.86% were women. The mean preoperative BMI was 44.58 kg/m2 (±7.71). A total of 183 patients (18.5%) were super-obese (BMI > 50 kg/m2 ). LSG was proposed as primary procedure, and also after failure of adjustable gastric banding in 169 patients (16.9%) or after vertical banded gastroplasty in 7 cases (0.7%). There were 38 postoperative gastric fistulas (3.8%) and 3 of them required some kind of bypass to be definitively treated. There were also 34 hemorrhages (3.4%) of which 21 were reoperated for hemostasis. Two gastric stenoses at the angulus (0.2%) were managed with dilation or RYGB. Overall reoperative rate was 6.8%. One patient died of pulmonary embolism. Most common late complication was GERD (39.1%). After 3, 4 and 5 years of LSG, the average of %EBL was, respectively, 75.95% (±29.16) (382 patients), 73.23% (±31.08) (222 patients) and 69.26% (±30.86) (144 patients). The success rate at 5 years was 65.97% (95 patients). The improvement or remission of comorbidities was found, respectively, in 88.4 and 57.2% of diabetic patients; 76.9 and 19.2% for hypertensive patients and 98 and 85% for patients with sleep apnea syndrome.

CONCLUSION: LSG is a bariatric surgery technique that presents a very good risk/benefit ratio. Five-year results are very convincing. GERD is the main long-term complication.