Effectiveness and factors predicting success of therapeutic patient education in obese patients candidates for bariatric surgery

Introduction Obesity is an increasingly common chronic disease. Its biopsychosocial basis provides the rationale of multidisciplinary interventions, such as Therapeutic Patient Education (TPE, WHO 1998), which is effective for lifestyle change and awareness improvement, thus reducing the disease's prevalence and its health care-related financial burden. However, patients’ socio-demographic and psychopathological factors may influence TPE's effectiveness. Objectives/Aims We aimed to assess the effectiveness of an 8-week TPE program in obese patients candidates for bariatric surgery and identify factors predicting its success. Methods We enrolled 159 patients with a BMI > 35 Kg/m 2 and obesity-related comorbidities (females = 71.3%; age range = 18-35 years) at the C.A.S.C.O. (EASO COMs) of our University Hospital. They filled out the Binge Eating Scale (BES), the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R), and the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36). We used Tukey's multiple comparison test to assess Quality of Life (QoL) improvement after TPE and multivariate logistic regression to estimate the size of the association between TPE and the aforementioned factors. Results The SF-36 showed a significant improvement ( P Conclusions In obese patients candidates for bariatric surgery, TPE is useful to improve physical and mental QoL, eating behavior, and psychological status. Several factors are predictive of TPE success, allowing a personalization of the intervention to render it more effective.