OBJECTIVE: This study estimated the prevalence of adherence to outpatient postoperative nutritional follow-up after bariatric surgery and analyzed the association between adherence and selected factors. METHODS: A total of 241 records of female and male adults who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass between 2006 and 2008 were reviewed for this retrospective cohort study. The data included the preoperative and postoperative periods. Individuals were considered compliant when they attended four or more nutritional appointments in the first 12 months after surgery. Prevalence ratios were calculated for estimating the association between adherence to postoperative nutritional follow-up and factors such as age, gender, marital status, education level, employment status, distance between home and hospital, weight loss strategies used during the preoperative period, body mass index immediately before surgery, presence of comorbidities and duration of hospital stay after surgery, and the Poisson multiple regression was used for adjusted analysis. RESULTS: Adherence prevalence was 56.0% (CI95% 49.7-62.3). Women composed 80.9% of the population; the mean age of the sample was 44.4 years (SD=11.6) and mean preoperative body mass index was 47.2kg/m² (SD=6.2). Among the study factors, only duration of postoperative hospital stay was significantly associated with adherence after adjustment for age and gender (PR=1.46 CI95% 1.15-1.86). CONCLUSION: The adherence prevalence of this population was similar to those of foreign studies, but below the minimum prevalence of 75% considered reference. The greater adherence of individuals with longer postoperative hospital stays may have stemmed from their prolonged interaction with the multidisciplinary team, which may have increased their awareness of disease severity and need of long-term health care.
Nutrition assessment; Bariatric surgery; Observational studies; Obesity; Postoperative period
