RELATIONSHIP OF FOOD INTOLERANCE 2 YEARS AFTER ROUX-EN-Y GASTRIC BYPASS SURGERY FOR OBESITY WITH MASTICATORY EFFICIENCY AND PROTEIN CONSUMPTION
Food intolerance - Bariatric Surgery - Chewing - Obesity - Eating Behavior
Background: Bariatric surgery has been shown to be effective in weight reduction of obese subjects, and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) surgery. is one of the most commonly performed surgeries, accounting for about 30% of all bariatric procedures One known complication of RYGB is food intolerance, which may limit the intake of some foods such as protein.
Objective: To investigate the relationship between food intolerance after RYGB and masticatory efficiency, chewing time and cycles, and protein and red meat consumption.
Methods: Case-control study in subjects over 18 years-old who underwent RYGB more than 2 years previously, with absence of no more than 2 dental units and normal oral motor system evaluation, with (cases) and without (controls) food intolerance (regurgitation and/or vomiting more than once a week). Masticatory efficiency was evaluated by a sieving technique to determine the granulometry of red meat chewed by the study subject according to a predefined protocol and classified from very bad to excellent. Protein and red meat consumption were evaluated by usual food recall and 3-day dietary diary. The target sample size was defined as 44 subjects per group, which would afford a power of 70% to detect an odds-ratio greater than 3.0 in the comparison of very poor masticatory efficiency between groups, assuming that its prevalence among controls is about 25%. Patient characteristics in both study groups were described by mean ± standard deviation or number (percent). The statistical tests for between-group comparisons included, for proportions, the chi-square test and the Fisher’s exact test, and for continuous variables the Student’s t-test and, for variables not normally distributed, the Mann-Whitney ranksum test. The main study variable was the ordinal scaled masticatory efficiency which was compared between groups with the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test. Analysis of variance was used to test the association of masticatory efficiency with protein and red meat consumption, chewing time and number of chewing cycles. The 5% significance level was adopted as evidence of a significant difference. All analyses were performed using Stata 15 software (Stata Corporation, College Station, TX, USA).. Results: The study population consisted of 24 cases (37.7±7.57 years-old, 79.2% females) and 68 controls (38.0±8.75 years-old, 61.8% females). There was a statistically significant association (p=0.001) between masticatory efficiency and food intolerance, with 58.3% of cases and 23.5% of controls showing very bad masticatory efficiency. No evidence was found of an association between food intolerance, chewing time, chweing cycles, and low protein or red meat intake.
Conclusion: One factor that leads the patient after BGYR to have difficulty in food adaptation and complain of food intolerance may be related to masticatory inefficiency.