Age is not associated with increased surgical complications in patients after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy

INTRODUCTION: Age is considered as a risk factor in bariatric surgery. The observation was made on the basis of results from studies where patients underwent different type of surgery, but laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) was not among them. It is necessary to reevaluate the association of age with adverse events in the group of patients after LSG. AIM: To investigate the association of age with surgery-related adverse events in patients after LSG. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Retrospective analysis of medical data was performed. The study involved 345 patients who underwent LSG in our institution between January 2013 and December 2014. The patients were subdivided by age into four groups according to quartiles. In 30-day follow-up adverse events were evaluated. We considered the presence of the following events as the endpoint of our study: death, medical events and surgical events. RESULTS: In general, we observed adverse events in 36 (10.4%) patients. The mortality rate in our study was 0.59%. Nineteen events were surgical and 18 medical. In 1 patient a surgical event was associated with a medical event. Bleeding was the most common surgical event and was observed in 17 (4.9%) cases. Age was not associated with surgical events (OR = 1.032, 95% CI: 0.991–1.075, p = 0.33) or medical events (OR = 0.997, 95% CI: 0.956–1.039, p = 0.89). CONCLUSIONS: The LSG is a safe bariatric procedure with low mortality. Bleeding is the most frequent surgical complication. Our findings suggest that age is not associated with increased risk of surgical or medical adverse events after LSG.