The patient perspective of living with surgery for morbid obesity: Creating a patient 'core' outcome set, and investigating ways to improve follow-up care.

Obesity is an increasing health problem worldwide. Surgical treatment can lead to dramatic weight loss and improvement of weight-related illnesses, but also has associated risks. Current standard evaluation focuses on surgical complications that are important to clinicians, however, little is known about how surgery affects outcomes that are important to patients. This project will use mixed methodology to establish outcomes that patients consider to be important after obesity surgery and how post-operative support can be improved. This will will help researchers ensure outcomes important to patients are measured and help improve NHS services for obesity surgery based on patient needs.

Conference presentations:

Measuring health-related quality of life in bariatric surgery: do results influence clinical practice? KD Coulman, T Abdelrahman, A Owen-Smith, RC Andrews, R Welbourn, JM Blazeby. Poster presentation at the Bristol Research and Innovation Annual Symposium, Bristol, May 2012.

Measuring patient reported outcomes in bariatric surgery: standards of reporting and synthesis with clinical data. Karen D Coulman, Tarig Abdelrahman, Amanda Owen-Smith, Rob Andrews, Richard Welbourn, Jane M Blazeby. Presentation in the prize session at the British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society conference, Bristol, January 2012.

Contributors

Karen Coulman, School of Community and Social Medicine, University of Bristol, and Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (Principal Investigator)
Dr. Amanda Owen-Smith, School of Community and Social Medicine, University of Bristol (Co-Supervisor)
Professor Jane Blazeby, School of Community and Social Medicine, University of Bristol (Co-Supervisor)
Mr Richard Welbourn, Dept of Bariatric and Upper GI Surgery, Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (Collaborator)
Dr Rob Andrews, School of Clinical Sciences, University of Bristol, and Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (Collaborator)

Publication

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Further Study Information

Current Stage: Not Applicable
Date: January 2012 - February 2016
Funding source(s): NIHR doctoral fellowship and the pre-PhD work funded by Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust R&D Enabling Grant and the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust Innovation Fund.


Health Area

Disease Category: Endocrine & metabolic

Disease Name: Obesity

Target Population

Age Range: 18 - 100

Sex: Either

Nature of Intervention: Rehabilitation, Surgery

Stakeholders Involved

- Consumers (patients)

Study Type

- Patient perspectives
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research

Method(s)

- Consensus meeting
- Delphi process
- Interview
- Systematic review

Systematic reviews of published quantitative and qualitative research will be undertaken to create a long list of outcomes that may be important to obesity surgery patients. This will be supplemented with qualitative interviews with obesity surgery patients to see if published outcomes reflect the outcomes that patients themselves consider to be important. The interviews will also establish how post-operative support in the NHS can be improved. Delphi questionnaire rounds followed by consensus meetings with obesity surgery patients will be undertaken to reduce the long list of outcomes to the most important ‘core’ outcomes to create a patient core outcome set for obesity surgery.