Initiation and Maintenance of Weight Loss after Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding. The role of Outcome Expectation and Satisfaction with the Psychosocial Outcome

BACKGROUND: A premise of this study was that different psychological processes would predict the initiation and maintenance of weight loss after surgery for morbid obesity. Our aim was to examine whether more favorable preoperative expectations of psychosocial outcomes predict weight loss in the first year after laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) and whether postoperative satisfaction with these outcomes predicts weight maintenance in the second year after the operation. METHODS: Six months before and 1 year after surgery, the “Obesity Psychosocial State Questionnaire” was filled out by 91 patients (77 female, 14 male, mean age 45 ± 9 years, mean preoperative body mass index 47 ± 6 kg/m(2)). We evaluated the preoperative outcome expectations and the postoperative satisfaction for the seven domains of psychosocial and physical functioning of this questionnaire, as well as the correlations between these scores and both weight loss and weight maintenance. RESULTS: Patients showed high satisfaction with psychosocial outcomes after LAGB in all seven domains (p < 0.001), even though the improvement was less than expected in five of the domains (p ≤ 0.01). While weight loss 1 year after the operation was related to satisfaction with psychosocial outcomes (p ≤ 0.05), preoperative expectations were not related to weight loss in the first year after surgery, and satisfaction with the outcomes was not related to weight maintenance in the second year after surgery. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that surgically induced effects of weight loss and weight maintenance are achieved independently of the patient’s preoperative expectations of and postoperative satisfaction with the psychosocial outcomes.