Extremely obese women with PCOS have high pregnancy and fertility rates after bariatric surgery, with few maternal and neonatal complications.
It is common for women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to regain ovulation after weight loss surgery, but whether this improves PCOS-related infertility remains unclear. Recently, a research article published in the authoritative journal of endocrinology and metabolic diseases, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, aimed to investigate the fertility and pregnancy outcomes of women with PCOS after bariatric surgery.
This single-center cohort study was conducted at a teaching hospital and included 261 premenopausal women who underwent PCOS screening prior to bariatric surgery. Regardless of whether they had PCOS, women were followed up after the intervention until mid-2019. The intervention in this study involved women who underwent bariatric surgery between 2005 and 2015. The primary outcome measures were pregnancy rate and live birth rate in both the PCOS and control groups.
Among women seeking fertility, the pregnancy rate was 95.2% in women with PCOS compared to 76.9% in the control group (P=0.096), with live birth rates of 81.0% and 69.2% respectively (P=0.403). The average time to first pregnancy after surgery was 34±28 months in women with PCOS and 32±25 months in the control group. Although the mean birth weight of newborns from women with PCOS (2763±618 g) was lower than that from newborns in the control group (3155±586 g) (P=0.040), the number of low birth weight infants was similar between the two groups (3 in the PCOS group and 1 in the control group, P=0.137). Maternal complications (17.6% in PCOS and 22.2% in the control group, P=0.843) and neonatal complications (23.5% in PCOS and 14.8% in the control group, P=0.466) were rare, with no difference between the two groups.
This shows that extremely obese women with PCOS have high pregnancy and fertility rates after bariatric surgery, with few maternal and neonatal complications.
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