‘No one is as invested in your continued good health as you should be:’ an exploration of the post‐surgical relationships between weight‐loss surgery patients and their home bariatric clinics

Abstract

This article traces the post-surgical relationship between weight-loss surgery (WLS) patients and their home bariatric clinics. Following surgery, there is substantive drop off in patient attendance at both follow-up appointments and support groups. While barriers to follow-up are often discussed with the bariatric literature, patients themselves are typically defined as the problem. Based upon a thematic analysis of 217 blog posts and comments in two top patient-led online forums, I demonstrate that bariatric patients tell a more complex story about their post-surgical lives. I argue that WLS patients constitute a population with highly specialised medical needs that is caught between the requirements for living with surgically altered digestive systems and a lack of sufficient post-operative followup care from their home bariatric clinics. Although online forums provide spaces for patients to examine these post-operative social and clinical experiences in critical terms, seek information and get support, ultimately the conversations serve to underline the value of personal responsibility for post-operative outcomes-a framing that echoes that of the bariatric profession. This framing should be understood within a larger climate of weight-based stigma and discrimination as well as neoliberal healthism.

Application and effectiveness of eHealth strategies for metabolic and bariatric surgery patients: A systematic review

“…Tables 1 and 2 summarize the current state of the literature in terms of published eHealth strategies, programs and interventions specifically targeting individuals who are either undergoing or who have completed MBS by study design (review articles to randomized controlled trials) and several other key characteristics. 14–61 Specifically, Tables 1 and 2 are organized by the RE-AIM constructs as follows: (1) the Reach column reports sample characteristics (e.g. unit of analysis, mean age, sex); (2) the Efficacy/Effectiveness column reports the primary focus or premise of the study; (3) the Adoption column summarizes the key reported primary and secondary (where applicable) outcomes; (4) the Implementation column reports the eHealth mechanism (e.g.…”

“…A total of 38 studies were found that met the search criteria, from years 2011 to 2019. There were a total of 16 descriptive/partial analytical studies 20–35 that included six reviews, nine qualitative and one mixed methods study (Table 1). There were a total of 22 analytical studies of which six were observational/cross-sectional, nine were prospective cohort designs, four were quasi-experimental and three were randomized controlled trials (Table 2).…”

Untold stories of living with a bariatric body: long‐term experiences of weight‐loss surgery

“…) but also a high prevalence of self‐reported medical, nutritional and surgical symptoms (Gribsholt et al . ) and deficient long‐term follow‐up from health professionals (Meleo‐Erwin , Torgersen et al . ).…”

Bariatric Biosociality: Pushed Together, Pulled Apart

“…Second and relatedly, as some authors have noted (Koball et al, 2017;Martins et al, 2015), bariatric patients may now be connecting via social media sites such as Facebook rather than websites such as OH. Nevertheless, sites like OH continue to have high traffic use and thus the conclusions drawn in this study about online WLS patient communities may still be relevant (Meleo-Erwin, 2019). Third, the sample was overwhelmingly female and based in the New York City Greater Metropolitan Area of the United States.…”