Background

In Sudan where the health resources are limited and high prevalence of tropical diseases, obesity would complicate health challenges even more. The field of bariatric surgery lacks research on Sudanese patients. This is due to the fact that until 2018, there were no centers specialized in the surgical management of obesity and its related comorbidities in the entire African Horn countries. This research is the first on patients underwent laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) or gastric bypass (LGB) in Sudan.

Methods

A cross-sectional study of 62 patients who underwent LSG or LGB at a bariatric center in Khartoum, Sudan between January 2019 and December 2020. Data were collected via interviews and laboratory results then analyzed using IBM SPSS.

Results

At the time of survey, the mean age of patients was 33.98 +- 9.07 years, the mean time since surgery was 9.37 +- 6.19 months. 91.94% of patients underwent LSG, and only 8.06% underwent LGB. The mean excess BMI loss (EBMIL) was 62.21 +- 26.26%. Before surgery, 21% of the patients had hypertension and 30.65% had type 2 diabetes. After surgery, all the hypertensive patients and more than 83% of the diabetics recovered. The mean HbA1c level was 6.15 +- 1.11 after surgery in patents previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Conclusions

Bariatric surgery displayed major effects in the recovery from diabetes and hypertension without the use of medications in Sudanese patients with improvement in HbA1c levels in all diabetics. Patients also presented significant %EBMIL that would decrease Cardiovascular diseases risk.