Long-Term Maintenance of Weight Loss Following Removal of Intragastric Balloon (IGB)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Obesity and its associated morbidity and mortality, is a global epidemic with increasing prevalence. Endoscopic bariatrics, primarily consisting of intragastric balloon (IGB) placement for variable periods of time, has become an accepted form of non-surgical treatment for obese patients in search of weight loss interventions. The long-term outcome of the procedure is still evolving and maintenance of lost weight once the balloon is removed remains controversial. The aim of this study is to determine if a mean of 6.5 months of IGB treatment provides long-term weight loss maintenance after IGB removal in the absence of continuous outpatient support. Methods: Twelve of 24 obese patients with the mean age of 40 years were successfully contacted. Anthropometric measurements were recorded at baseline, removal, and telephone follow-up. Successful longterm IGB therapy is defined as maintenance of total body weight loss of over 10% from baseline. Results: At the time of balloon removal (mean of 6.5 months) the measurements were observed at body mass index (BMI) 30kg/m2, mean percent of excess weight loss (EWL) 53%, and percentage total body weight loss (TBWL) 14%. Telephone follow-up occurred after a mean of 4 years after removal of the IGB. Regain has been observed for BMI 34 kg/m2, %EWL 28%, and %TBWL4%,. Three patients (25%) maintained a mean %TBWL of 16% (mean %TBWL of 20% at removal), while five patients have kept a mean %TBWL of <4% (mean %TBWL of 13% at removal). There were no complications related to the IGB treatment. Four patients returned to baseline body weight, 2 of whom reached %TBWL 13% and 20% at the time of IGB removal. Conclusion: IGB treatment is an effective and safe non-invasive surgery, which results in variable weight loss over a temporary period of time. However, once the IGB is removed, recidivism or weight regain is a significant problem for the long- term benefit of this procedure. IGB therapy has proven to be a long-term weight loss solution in only 25% of patients as opposed to 83% of patients who saw temporary success at the time of removal. Continuous multidisciplinary outpatient support in the form of psychotherapy, regimented exercise, and supervision by a dietician are necessary not only while the IGB treatment is in place, but also after the balloon is removed would yield the best long-term benefit for these patients. IGB can however, be extremely valuable as a short-term weight loss intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".