This article discusses vitamin B12 deficiency and its reflexes in the health of people undergoing bariatric surgery. This is an exploratory descriptive study of the type literature review in which a search was conducted for articles from journals indexed in the Pubmed/MEDLINE and Scielo databases, using the descriptors bariatric surgery, obesity, postoperative care, malnutrition and vitamin B12 in order to gather information about this deficiency and its reflexes on the health of this population. The inclusion criteria were work on the theme from 2005 to 2016. With this, 35 articles were selected. The findings confirmed the existence of malnutrition of vitamin B12 in people who underwent this type of surgery and explained the importance of its longterm supplementation for its prevention and/or treatment, and although there are no specific recommendations for this population yet, it has been a preventive clinical practice to administer 1000 μg parenteral in the preoperative period and in the postoperative period may be oral (2000 mcg/120 days) or intramuscular (1000 mcg injections). Therefore, this deficiency in bariatric patients is evidenced in the current literature that elucidates their health reflexes, demonstrating the importance of their supplementation before and after surgery, but there is a need for more specific studies that help in the creation of precise protocols.
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