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Black Patients Less Likely To Get Weight Loss Surgery

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Jan 21, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 21, 2025 -- Black people with obesity are less likely to get weight-loss surgery than others.

Black people are just as likely to discuss the procedure with their doctor -- nearly 10%, compared with 9% of patients of other races, researchers said.

But only about 8% of those Black patients go on and actually get the surgery, compared with nearly 13% of other patients, researchers report in a study published Jan. 15 in the Annals of Surgery Open.

These results show that doctors need to do more to promote weight-loss surgery as an option for all patients, regardless of race, researchers said.

“As a clinician, I often see patients who could potentially benefit from metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) but who aren’t aware of this treatment option,” senior researcher Dr. Alexander Turchin, director of quality in diabetes at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, said in a news release.

“Patients who discuss MBS are much more likely to undertake it and lose weight,” Turchin continued. “Our findings indicate that we need to improve these conversations and identify barriers to undergoing surgery once it has been discussed.”

Obesity affects more than 40% of U.S. adults, including nearly 50% of Black Americans, researchers said in background notes.

For the study, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze records of more than 122,000 patients with obesity treated at the Mass General Brigham health system between 2000 and 2022. About 11,100 of those patients discussed weight-loss surgery with a doctor.

Most (74%) first broached the subject with their primary care doctor, results show. The annual rate of these discussions increased from around 3% to 10% during the two decades covered by the study.

“Encouragingly, this study found that rates of discussion and utilization of MBS have increased over time,” researchers wrote. “This increase in discussion rates mirrors the increased safety of MBS procedures over the past 20 years.”

Overall, about 9% of patients discussed weight-loss surgery with a doctor, and of those patients, about 13% went on to have the surgery.

However, race appears to have played a role in who wound up moving from discussion to action, results show.

Sex also played a role. Men were significantly less likely to discuss weight-loss surgery than women in the first place, fewer than 8% compared with nearly 15%, results show.

While racial differences in proceeding with weight-loss surgery decreased during the two decades of the study, researchers noted, sex disparities increased.

It’s not clear why Black people are less likely to proceed with weight loss surgery, researchers said. They speculated it could owe to mistrust of the medical system or to differences in social pressure to lose weight between racial groups.

“Providers need to ensure that patients have all the available information to make decisions about obesity treatments,” Turchin concluded. “Future studies will be required to understand how the advent of new medications to treat obesity such as GLP-1 agonists impacts patient-provider discussions about MBS.”

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted January 2025

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