Abstract
Body contouring following massive weight loss is a rapidly expanding field in plastic surgery. However, healthcare payers are reluctant to fund such procedures, viewing them as purely cosmetic. This has resulted in a flurry of studies assessing quality of life (QoL) and patient satisfaction following body contouring surgery in this cohort of patients to establish an evidence base to support the idea that body contouring is as much (or even more) a functional procedure as it is cosmetic. However, the methods employed in these studies are seldom ideal, and hence the conclusions are unreliable. The gold standard to assess QoL and patient satisfaction is to use patient specific psychometrically validated patient reported outcome (PRO) measures. Developing such measures consists of a three-step process which includes a review of the current literature, qualitative patient interviews to determine what patients consider the most important, and expert opinion. This study aims to appraise the currently available literature on assessment of QoL and patient satisfaction in body contouring surgery patients. This will hopefully provide an understanding of methodological weaknesses in current studies and inform future investigators of the design of ideal instruments for assessing QoL and patient satisfaction in body contouring patients.
Highlights
Body contouring surgery has undergone a rapid expansion in the last decade, becoming one of the fastest growing areas within plastic surgery
As the number of obese individuals continues to increase, bariatric surgery has come to the fore as the method of choice for rapidly losing excess weight with approximately one quarter of patients opting for bariatric surgery [1]
The aim of this study is to review the methods of assessing quality of life (QoL) and patient satisfaction in postbody contouring massive weight loss (MWL) patients
Summary
Body contouring surgery has undergone a rapid expansion in the last decade, becoming one of the fastest growing areas within plastic surgery. When a previously obese or morbidly obese individual loses a massive amount of weight, it results in cutaneous contour deformities on various parts of the body. These cutaneous deformities may lead to psychological distress as well as functional problems, offsetting the positive benefits brought about by weight loss surgery [2,3,4]. Most healthcare systems still consider body contouring to be a cosmetic procedure and are reluctant to fund such operations This in turn has led to a number of studies addressing body contouring surgery following massive weight loss in patients who have already had bariatric surgery. In terms of procedure related complications, it has been shown that
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