It is the first long-term study of gastric bypass and other abdominal surgeries that help severely obese individuals lose large amounts of weight.
Two separate studies in Sweden and the United States concluded that obese people who underwent such stomach surgeries had a 30 percent to 40 percent lower risk of dying seven to 10 years later compared with those who did not undergo such treatments.
The research, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, may not only cause governments and insurers to reconsider their policies but could also lead to a surge in more such operations, possibly for less severely obese people, too.
According to the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery, weight-loss surgeries have surged in recent years across the globe. In the United States alone, 177,600 operations were performed last year.
In Swedish study, researchers led by Dr. Lars Sjostrom of Goteborg University compared 4,047 people with a body-mass index over 34 who had one of three types of surgery or received standard diet advice. Of the 2,010 surgery patients, 101 died while there were 129 deaths reported for 2,037 people who did not undergo surgery.
In the U.S. study, Ted Adams of the University of Utah led a team that looked at 7,925 severely obese people in the state who had gastric bypass. It was found that 213 people who had surgery died compared to 321 who did not have the procedure.
Gastric bypass procedures are any of a group of similar operations used to treat morbid obesity. A gastric bypass first divides the stomach into a small upper pouch and a much larger, lower "remnant" pouch and then re-arranges the small intestine to allow both pouches to stay connected to it.
