Black-vs-white racial disparities in 30-day outcomes following primary and revisional metabolic and bariatric surgery: a MBSAQIP database analysis

Soomin Lee; Matthew M Hutter; James J Jung

doi:10.1007/s00464-025-11564-0

Black-vs-white racial disparities in 30-day outcomes following primary and revisional metabolic and bariatric surgery: a MBSAQIP database analysis

Surg Endosc. 2025 Jan 27. doi: 10.1007/s00464-025-11564-0. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Soomin Lee¹, Matthew M Hutter², James J Jung^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
² Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Department of Surgery, Duke University, 2301 Erwin Road, HAFS Building 7th floor 7665A, Durham, NC, 27710, USA. James.Jung@duke.edu.
⁴ Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University, 2301 Erwin Road, HAFS Building 7th floor 7665A, Durham, NC, 27710, USA. James.Jung@duke.edu.

PMID: 39870832
DOI: 10.1007/s00464-025-11564-0

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated Black-vs-White disparities in postoperative outcomes following primary metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS). With the rising prevalence of MBS, it is important to examine racial disparities using quality indicators in primary and revisional procedures. This study explores Black-vs-White disparities in postoperative outcomes following primary and revisional MBS.

Methods: We performed an observational cohort study using the 2015-2020 Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP) database of adults who underwent primary or revisional Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, duodenal switch, or one-anastomosis gastric bypass. Black and White patients were 1:1 matched using propensity scores across 19 covariates for primary and revisional MBS groups. McNemar's tests were used to compare 11 postoperative outcomes from the MBSAQIP semi-annual report and death, between matched cohorts.

Results: We identified 112,495 Black and 434,266 White primary MBS and 10,838 Black and 37,075 White revisional MBS patients. A total of 219,114 primary and 21,314 revisional patients were matched. Following primary MBS, Black patients had higher rates of death (0.1% vs. 0.06%, p < 0.001), all occurrences morbidity (5.6% vs. 4.7%, p < 0.001), serious events (2.2% vs. 1.9%, p < 0.001), and all cause and related reoperations (1.2% vs. 1.1%, p = 0.006; 0.2% vs. 0.1%, p = 0.01), readmissions (4.6% vs. 3.4%, p < 0.001; 2.8% vs. 1.9%, p < 0.001), and interventions (1.4% vs. 1.1%, p < 0.001; 0.8% vs. 0.6%, p < 0.001) compared to White patients. In contrast, there were no significant Black-vs-White disparities in death, morbidity, serious events, reoperations, interventions, and bleeding following revisional MBS. Interestingly, Black patients had higher rates of all cause and related readmissions (7.4% vs. 6.2%, p = 0.005; 4.4% vs. 3.6%, p = 0.01), but lower surgical site infection rates (1.6% vs. 2.1%, p = 0.04).

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate a measurable contrast between racial disparities in postoperative outcomes following primary and revisional MBS. Equity-focused measures in national MBS assessments are needed to elucidate and address these disparities.

Keywords: Black; MBSAQIP; Metabolic and bariatric surgery; Postoperative outcomes; Racial disparities; White.