Prevalence of obesity and bariatric surgery among medical students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND: Bariatric surgery is considered as a successful weight loss intervention in patients with high body mass index (BMI) and also in patients who are unable to lose weight in a nonsurgical way.

AIM: To measure the prevalence of obesity among medical students and the association between obesity and lifestyle and obesity and the rate of bariatric surgery in obese students.

METHOD: This is a cross sectional study which included 301 medical students in Riyadh. An online pretested and validated questionnaire was distributed among medical students. The collected data included weight, height, family background, lifestyle, and past medical and surgical history.

RESULT: Our results demonstrated that the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity was 26.6%, 9.6%, and 6.3%, respectively, among medical students. Only 44.9% of them had a family history of obesity (n = 135). Upon assessment of lifestyle, we found that 58.8% of them had a good lifestyle and 41.2% had a bad lifestyle. We found that 42.5% of medical students included in this study have obesity, and 44% of students had history of obesity in their family. In the obese group, 47.6% had a bad lifestyle. There was significant relationship between obesity and lifestyle among medical students (P = 0.0004). We found that 83.1% of students never thought of undergoing bariatric surgery, 10% of them had thought of undergoing it, and 7% of the students had undergone bariatric surgery.

CONCLUSION: the prevalence of obesity is less among medical student in comparison to other subgroups. The educational level and environmental factors play an important role in the prevalence of obesity.