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Bariatric Surgery Registries: Can They Contribute to Improved Outcomes?

  • Health Services and Programs (R Welbourn, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Obesity Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Clinical registries systematically collect prospective information about patients with a particular medical condition, who have had a medical device implanted or who have undergone a particular procedure. When these variables are collected with pre-defined quality indices included, the benched-marked risk-adjusted data may be a valuable resource for providing feedback on outcomes, including performance, to practitioners, patients, health services and device manufacturers.

Recent Findings

There are examples of feedback from clinical registries positively influencing patient care. The Australian National Joint Registry identified a poorly performing hip prosthesis which was ultimately withdrawn from the market. Feedback from the Victorian State Prostate Cancer Registry has contributed to improved patient care and fewer positive surgical margins noted over a 5-year reporting period.

There are several national and regional registries collecting information on patients undergoing bariatric surgery, however, few currently focus on quality outcome measures. Whilst, current bariatric registries have contributed to improved understanding of some of the clinical situations relating to bariatric surgery, as well as developing composite risk scores and measuring quality cultures, they have not as yet demonstrably directly influenced patient care. This may reflect the fact that many of the registries do not hold data that are mature enough for proper analysis, but may also reflect problems with systematic data collection, bias from missing results and lack of appropriate funding.

Summary

It will be important in the future that bariatric surgery registries actively seek to measure and validate their contribution to patient outcomes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bariatric Surgery Registry, Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Melbourne, Australia

    Wendy A. Brown, Andrew D. MacCormick, John J. McNeil & Ian D. Caterson

  2. Monash University Department of Surgery, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

    Wendy A. Brown

  3. Centre for Obesity Research and Education, Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Melbourne, Australia

    Wendy A. Brown

  4. Department of Surgery, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Andrew D. MacCormick

  5. Boden Institute, Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Ian D. Caterson

Authors
  1. Wendy A. Brown
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wendy A. Brown.

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Conflict of Interest

Wendy A. Brown has received research funding through grants from the Australian Commonwealth Government, Medtronic, Apollo Endosurgery, Applied Medical, and GORE; has received compensation from Novo Nordisk for serving as a guest speaker and for participating on a scientific advisory board and speaker’s honorarium from Merck Sharpe and Dohme for participation in a seminar on patient perioperative care; and is the clinical lead of the Australian and New Zealand Bariatric Surgery Registry.

Andrew D. MacCormick declares that he has no conflict of interest.

John J. McNeil declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ian D. Caterson has received funding for clinical trials through grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, SFI, and The Egg Board; and has received compensation for serving as a guest speaker from Novo Nordisk, Servier Laboratories Australia, and Aché.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Brown, W.A., MacCormick, A.D., McNeil, J.J. et al. Bariatric Surgery Registries: Can They Contribute to Improved Outcomes?. Curr Obes Rep 6, 414–419 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-017-0286-3

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