The Potential Role of Objective Activity Monitoring in Off-Site Follow-Ups Post-Bariatric Surgery | Insight Medical Publishing

Title: The Potential Role of Objective Activity Monitoring in Off-Site Follow-Ups Post-Bariatric Surgery. Background: Weight gain and attendance at follow-up visits after bariatric surgery are of great concern for the multidisciplinary care team. Geography and schedules make attending follow-up visits increasingly difficult as time after surgery goes on. Recently, inexpensive commercially available activity monitors have become more common place, making information concerning physical activity and sedentary behaviours deliverable online, allowing for important patient lifestyle information to be transmitted to the multidisciplinary care team. The purpose of this study was to determine if off-site objectively monitored physical activity and sedentary time can describe health measures such as total body fat, abdominal adipose tissue (AAT), and weight maintenance long-term post-bariatric surgery. Methods and findings: 59 individuals who had undergone bariatric surgery wore an ActivPAL for seven consecutive days, monitoring physical activity and sedentary time and underwent one DXA scan to determine body composition. Linear regression shows that (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) explained 18.8% of variance in body fat (p=0.019) and 11.3% of the variance in AAT (p=0.033). Conclusions: Objective monitoring could offer beneficial information concerning patients’ health at post-surgical follow-up visits.