Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Obesity is a major public health concern in Canada, as an increasing number of adults and children are becoming severely obese. Severe obesity is a serious health problem with life threatening consequences. The most effective treatment for severe obesity is weight loss (bariatric) surgery, which is very effective at producing significant weight loss, improvements in health and prolonging life. However, bariatric surgery can have serious complications. One of these complications is malnutrition, where people lose too much weight or muscle, or become deficient in key vitamins and minerals. Older bariatric surgeries were very drastic and often caused such problems, but with the newest technology and techniques, severe malnutrition is now thought to be very rare after bariatric surgery. However, recent reports have suggested it may not actually be uncommon but more research is needed. Because bariatric surgery is becoming more popular in Canada and both the surgery and its complications can have high costs to peoples' health and to the healthcare system, this is an important issue to examine. This study will examine the frequency of severe nutritional complications in people who undergo bariatric surgery in Ontario using information from existing health databases. The goal of the study is to determine how often these complications occur and if they can be predicted by any factors so that we can potentially improve the health system to prevent such complications.