Mental health status as a predictor of emergency department visits and hospital readmissions post bariatric surgery: a retrospective cohort study

Background This retrospective cohort study aims to investigate emergency department (ED) visits and readmission after bariatric surgery among patients with a history of anxiety and/or depression. We predict that patients with a reported history of anxiety and/or depression will have more ED visits in the year following surgery than patients without a history of mental illness. Methods Data were collected from the charts of all consecutive patients who underwent sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass surgery between March 2012 and December 2019. Data on baseline body mass index, mental health diagnosis and treatment and emergency department visits and hospital readmissions were retrospectively reviewed over the first year following surgery. Results One thousand two hundred ninety-seven patients were originally included in this study and 1113 patients were included in the final analysis. Patients with a history of depression (OR 1.23; 95% CI 0.87–1.73), anxiety (OR 1.14; 95% CI 0.81–1.60), or both (OR 1.17; 95% CI 0.83–1.65) did not have a statistically significant increase in ED visits compared to patients without these disorders. Patients with a history of depression (OR 1.49; 95% CI 0.86–2.61), anxiety (OR 1.45; 95% CI 0.80–2.65) or both (OR 1.47; 95% CI 0.94–2.29) did not have a statistically significant increase in hospital readmissions in the first year after surgery compared to patients without these disorders. Patients treated with a sleeve gastrectomy were readmitted due to postoperative complications less frequently than those treated with other surgeries (OR 0.20; 95% CI 0.05–0.83). Conclusion Patients with a history of anxiety, depression or both did not have an increased rate of emergency department visits and hospital readmissions within the first year following bariatric surgery. This contradicts current literature and may be due to the multidisciplinary program patients undergo at this study’s home institution.