Increasing Obesity Severity Is Associated With Less Surgical Care in the United States
Authors' conclusion
Despite increased growth in higher BMI populations, individuals in these categories undergo fewer surgical operations annually.
Study context
- Population
- All multispecialty National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) surgical cases, US, 2005–2022
- Participants
- 11,634,075 NSQIP cases
- Exposure
- Trends in proportional operative volume across BMI categories over time
- Outcome
- Proportional operative volume (odds of undergoing surgery) by BMI category over consecutive years
- Follow-up
- 2005 to 2022
Methodological detailsmultispecialty NSQIP database, multinomial logistic regression adjusted for demographics and comorbidities
- Multispecialty NSQIP database
- Multinomial logistic regression adjusted for demographics and comorbidities
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Odds of undergoing surgery over consecutive years by BMI category
- Decreased odds of patients with BMI ≥ 50 kg/m² undergoing surgery over consecutive years, with increasingly higher BMI groups representing greater declines
- Patients with BMI 30.0-39.9 kg/m² had increased proportional operative volume
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Original publication
Increasing Obesity Severity Is Associated With Less Surgical Care in the United States. Obesity (Silver Spring). Published 8 June 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →