Obesity surgery: discouraging long term results with Mason's vertical banded gastroplasty

Objective: To evaluate the long term results of Mason's vertical banded gastroplasty (VBG) using accepted criteria, and to find out which factors predicted success.Design: Retrospective survey of a cohort of 40 severely obese patients (mean initial body mass index (BMI in kg/m2): 43, range 34-62).Setting: General teaching hospital, The Netherlands.Main outcome measures: Success according to three definitions: weight loss of more than 25%; percentage of excess weight 50% or less; and BMI < 30.Results: Mean follow-up was 7.4 years (range 0.5-10) or 85%. The distribution over MacLean and Reinhold criteria shows a shift towards unfavourable categories. The consecutive percentages of success at five years were 35%, 62%, and 35%.Logistic regression analysis of success at 5 years shows that the following factors significantly predicted success: Definition I: age odds ratio (95% confidence interval): 0.88 (0.78 to 0.99). Definition II: age: 0.84 (0.69-1.01), outlet ≥ 5 cm: 176 (2.4 to 12774), percentage of ideal ...