The clinical benefit of bariatric surgery in patients with severe obesity and established
coronary artery disease (CAD) is unclear. We aimed to compare the cardiovascular outcomes
of severely obese CAD patients with and without bariatric surgery.Patients with a
history of myocardial revascularization documented prior to bariatric surgery were
identified from a dedicated database with prospectively collected outcomes. These
patients were matched 1 to 1 with CAD patients who had prior revascularization but
who did not undergo bariatric surgery. The primary outcomes were death (cardiac and
non-cardiac) and major adverse cardio-cerebral events (MACCE), including death, myocardial
infarction (MI), stroke, and repeat myocardial revascularization throughout follow-up.After
propensity score matching, 116 bariatric patients were matched with 116 control patients.
Ninety-eight had a history of coronary artery bypass surgery and 134 had a previous
percutaneous coronary intervention. After a median follow-up of 8.9 (6.3-14.2) years,
MACCE was significantly lower in the bariatric group (HR 0.65; 95% CI 0.42-1.00; P
= 0.049) driven by a significant reduction in non-cardiac mortality (HR 0.49; 95%
CI 0.23-1.00; P = 0.049). There was no significant difference in the rates of all-cause
death (HR 0.58; 95% CI 0.33-1.01; P = 0.056), cardiovascular death (HR 0.77; 95% CI
0.31-1.85; P = 0.55), MI (HR 1.09; 95% CI 0.47-2.58; P = 0.85), stroke (HR 1.47; 95%
CI 0.24-11.2; P = 0.67), and repeat myocardial revascularization (HR 0.56; 95% CI
0.27-1.13; P = 0.11).Although bariatric surgery in obese CAD patients may reduce the
composite MACCE endpoint during long-term follow-up, this effect seems unrelated to
cardiovascular outcomes.
