A national audit has uncovered serious failures in the care of obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery, with more than one in every six patients readmitted within six months of the procedure.
GPs are frequently left to pick up the pieces after bariatric surgery with little or no information on how to care for the patient, the panel of independent experts concluded.
A review of the care of almost 400 patients undergoing bariatric surgery in a three-month period found 18% of patients were readmitted within the first six months of surgery.
A third did not receive proper follow up in the six months after their operation and 44% had their first follow up appointment more than six weeks after surgery. One in five discharge summaries were found to be ‘poor or unacceptable’, the audit found.
This was despite 8,000 people undergoing bariatric surgery in 2010/11 – an increase of more than 90% from two years previously.
1 comment:
A sad example of the modern obsession with treating the condition and not the patient.
Geoff
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