Might Surgical Weight Loss Put Bones at Risk?

Experts consider possible causes after study finds high fracture rate

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

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FRIDAY, Jan. 1 (HealthDay News) -- When diet and exercise attempts haven't worked, increasing numbers of overweight people have turned to bariatric, or weight-loss, surgery to shed pounds.

But research reported in 2009 pointed to an unintended result: One of every five people who had bariatric surgery had broken a bone within a few years.

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Were the breaks a result of the surgery? Or of the weight loss that followed? Might they have been related to something going on in the body, either before or after the surgery? Or might something else altogether have been at work?

The answers remain unclear.

The finding came from an early analysis of data from a study by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn. The study included 97 people, most middle-age and mostly women. All had had bariatric surgery -- either stapling of the stomach, called gastric bypass, or stomach banding, called gastric band surgery. In the next seven years, 21 of them had 31 fractures.

The researchers compared the fracture rate for the people in the study with the rate for residents of Olmsted County, Minn., and found that people who had undergone weight-loss surgery were nearly twice as likely to have broken a bone for the first time as were those in the general population. The rate for specific sites was higher, with the risk for fracturing a foot, for instance, nearly four times higher among people who'd had bariatric surgery than in the general population.

The researchers did not determine what caused the increase in broken limbs. Their research, presented at a meeting in June of the Endocrine Society, continues and, through a Mayo Clinic spokesman, they declined further comment.

Until more findings are in, experts can only speculate about the cause and advise people who have had or plan to have bariatric surgery to pay close attention to bone health.

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