Abstract
Background: With increasing childhood obesity, adolescent bariatric surgery has been increasingly performed. We used a national database to analyze current trends in laparoscopic bariatric surgery in the adolescent population and related short-term outcomes. Methods: Discharge data from the University Health System Consortium (UHC) database was accessed using International Classification of Disease codes during a 36 month period. UHC is an alliance of more than 110 academic medical centers and nearly 250 affiliate hospitals. All adolescent patients between 13 and 18 years of age, with the assorted diagnoses of obesity, who underwent laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB), sleeve gastrectomy (SG), and laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (LRYGB) were evaluated. The main outcome measures analyzed were morbidity, mortality, length of hospital stay (LOS), overall cost, intensive care unit (ICU) admission rate, and readmission rate. These outcomes were compared to those of adult bariatric surgery. Results: Adolescent laparoscopic bariatric surgery was performed on 329 patients. At the same time, 49,519 adult bariatric surgeries were performed. One hundred thirty-six adolescent patients underwent LAGB, 47 had SG, and 146 patients underwent LRYGB. LAGB has shown a decreasing trend (n = 68, 34, and 34), while SG has shown an increasing trend (n = 8, 15, and 24) over the study years. LRYGB remained stable (n = 44, 60, and 42) throughout the study period. The individual and summative morbidity and mortality rates for these procedures were zero. Compared to adult bariatric surgery, 30 day in-hospital morbidity (0 vs. 2.2 %, p <0.02), the LOS (1.99 ± 1.37 vs. 2.38 ± 3.19, p <0.03), and 30 day readmission rate (0.30 vs. 2.02 %, p <0.05) are significantly better for adolescent bariatric surgery, while the ICU admission rate (9.78 vs. 6.30 %, p <0.02) is higher and overall cost ($9,375 ± 6,452 vs. $9,600 ± 8,016, p = 0.61) is comparable. Conclusion: Trends in adolescent laparoscopic bariatric surgery reveal the increased use of sleeve gastrectomy and adjustable gastric banding falling out of favor.