RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Bariatric surgery is 1 of the major treatments of obesity. OBJECTIVES: This study describes the development of the bariatric surgery in France and look at some factors of this evolution. SETTING: It concerns the activity of all the French hospitals over a 22-year period. METHODS: Hospitalization databases from 1997 to 2018 have been used to study the evolution of the number of bariatric operations, their types, the characteristics of both patients and hospitals performing this surgery. RESULTS: The number of operations grew from 2800 in 1997 to 52,500 in 2018, with 2 interruptions in this growth, in 2002 and from 2017 to date. The rate of operations is 4 times higher for women than for men, with a peak in the 35-44 age group. The adjustable gastric banding was the most popular operation until 2010, then replaced by sleeve gastrectomy since 2010. Private for-profit hospitals carried out the majority of these operations, even if the public hospitals activity progressed regularly during the past 2 decades. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to other countries, the rate of bariatric operations in France is rather high whereas the obesity rate is medium to low. Easy accessibility to bariatric surgery should play a role in the high rate, but specific studies are necessary to evaluate if the operations are delivered adequately to the obese population.
