Patients' Perceptions of Short-Term Recovery After a Gastric Bypass

Purpose To explore gastric bypass patients' perceptions of their postoperative recovery over 1 month. Design A standardized questionnaire, the postoperative recovery profile, was used. Methods Postoperative recovery profile is a multi-item questionnaire for self-assessment of general postoperative recovery. Participants were patients who had undergone gastric bypass surgery (n = 39). The changes in recovery between 1 day and 1 month postsurgery were evaluated by a statistical method developed specifically for analyzing changes in paired ordered data over time. Findings Most of the symptoms and/or functions were significantly improved on a group level. The most marked improvement was to pain and sleeping difficulties followed by mobilization. In terms of the psychological items, the proportion of patients who indicated no problems was high at both endpoints. The items that deviated from the improvement pattern were appetite changes and gastrointestinal function which demonstrated a relatively high proportion of deterioration, and the individual variability was prominent. Conclusions There is a need for interventions to improve recovery on a group as well as an individual level.