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Elevated suicide rates have been reported in the year following bariatric surgery (typically, for individuals with body-mass index [BMI] ≥40 or BMI ≥35 plus obesity-related medical complications). In the past decade, the U.S. rates of this surgery have increased substantially; in 2007, investigators estimated that 225,000 procedures were performed annually. Now, researchers report results from the first long-term study of suicide rates following bariatric surgery, based on data from 16,683 bariatric surgery procedures performed on Pennsylvania residents from 1995 through 2004; 13 patients died by suicide through 2006.
The postsurgical suicide rate was found to be 13.7/10,000 for men and 5.2/10,000 for women, compared with 2.4/10,000 for age-…