Weight Loss Surgery Could Cause Long-Lasting Digestive Issues [STUDY]

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A recent study finds that a common weight loss surgery is associated with long term gastrointestinal problems and food intolerance.

The researchers examined the data of 249 extremely obese patients who had laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass - a surgery that reduces the stomach to a small pouch about the size of an egg.

The patients involved in this surgery lost up to 31 percent of their total body weight two years after the surgery. However, in comparison to the control group of 295 obese people who did not undergo the surgery, the gastric bypass patients were most likely to experience indigestion and also the inability to tolerate some kind of food.

"It was already known from previous studies that the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass might aggravate gastrointestinal symptoms after surgery," said lead study author Dr. Thomas Boerlage of MC Slotervaart in Amsterdam. But he added that most of these studies focused on the first year after surgery.

When the study commenced in 2012, the patients were 46 years old on average and up to 45 percent of them had high blood pressure while 29 percent had diabetes. The researchers conducted a survey among the patients including the group of obese people who did not undergo the surgery.

The survey sought to enquire about 16 different gastrointestinal symptoms. They researchers found that the postoperative group had 2.2 symptoms on average, compared to 1.8 with the control group.

Among the gastrointestinal problems the postoperative patients suffered are indigestion, flatulence, stomach gurgling, belching and hard or loose stools. About 71 percent of the postoperative patients suffer food intolerance, compared to the 17 percent in the control group, according to Fox news.

Half of the patients who reported food intolerance had an aversion to at least four different kinds of food while 14 percent complained that the intolerance was very bothersome. They often report intolerance to fried foods, cakes, carbonated drinks, pies, pastries, ice cream and spicy food.

According to Yahoo, there was no correlation between the level of weight loss during the study and the high number of food intolerance. Apart from being a small study, another limitation of the study is that the researchers also lacked data on the symptoms experience by the patients before the surgery, thus making it practically impossible to determine what gastrointestinal problem was caused by the surgery.

Even though Roux-en-Y was the most common type of gastric bypass when the study was conducted, another procedure known as "sleeve gastrectomy", which reduces the stomach to the size of a banana, now accounts for more operations, Dr. Andrei Keidar of Rabin Medical Center and Tel Aviv University in Israel says. It is also likely to have less gastrointestinal side effects, Keidar added.

Gastric bypass patients are always advised to avoid certain foods that may be hard to digest for some period of time after surgery, but many of the patients experiencing food intolerance failed to follow this advice, Dr. Anita Courcoulas, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center says.

The researchers published their findings in the British Journal of Surgery.