Partnering Support Interventions with Bariatric Surgery to Maximize Health Outcomes in Adolescents with Severe Obesity

Objective: Rates of adolescents with severe obesity continue to rise worldwide, with concurrent increases in metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) uptake. The gap between support (lifestyle, pharmacotherapy) interventions and MBS as treatment options for adolescents has been understudied. This review, couched in a socio-ecological framework, investigates how support interventions for adolescents with severe obesity could be combined or sequenced with MBS to optimize health outcomes. Methods: A comprehensive search revealed 36 published articles between 1995 and 2019 that included the combination of support interventions and MBS among adolescents. Results: There were no studies that specifically reported outcomes or effect sizes for the combination of lifestyle intervention with MBS. Previous studies have reported individual results for either lifestyle intervention or MBS but not for their compound effect. Conclusions: As rates of adolescents with severe obesity are on the rise globally, future research should focus on how partnering support interventions with MBS can amplify positive short- and long-term health outcomes and within a socio-ecological framework. Understanding the sequence of these approaches will be of particular importance. High-risk and vulnerable populations such as ethnic minorities who have suffered a disproportionate burden of the obesity epidemic must be included in rigorously tested future trials of combination interventions to maximize health outcomes worldwide.