Weight-Loss Surgery Helps Obese Moms' Pregnancies

Women who underwent dramatic weight loss after bariatric surgery had fewer pregnancy and delivery problems and fewer newborn complications than obese pregnant mothers, according to a recent study. The investigation, which analyzed the data from 75 clinical studies, discovered that pregnant women who had undergone weight-loss surgery (laparoscopic adjustable band surgery) experienced fewer complications than obese women. In particular, 0 percent of weight-loss women suffered from gestational diabetes, versus 22.1 percent of obese women, and 0 percent of weight-loss women had pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), versus 3.1 percent of obese women. Also, women with bariatric surgery had less weight gain than the others.

The newborn babies of weight-loss-surgery women also fared better than those of new mothers who were obese. The women with bariatric surgery experienced premature delivery 7.7 percent of the time, while obese women suffered it 7.1 percent of the time. Low birth weight was a feature of 7.7 percent of the bariatric surgery newborns, and 10.6 percent of obese mothers' babies.

Newborns of the weight-loss group exhibited overly large body (macrosomia) 7.7 percent of the time, while those in the other group displayed it 14.6 percent of the time. "Research is needed to better delineate the extent to which surgery and subsequent weight loss improve fertility and pregnancy outcomes," wrote the authors of the review, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 "Optimizing success for contraception and producing healthy [newborns] following surgery will require a multidisciplinary effort by surgeons, primary care physicians, reproductive fertility specialists, obstetricians, and patients." Data from the 75 studies show that the number of weight-loss surgeries increased by about 800 percent from 1998 to 2005 (from 12,480 to 113,500) in the United States. Eighty-three percent of those procedures were performed on women 18 to 45 years of age.

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