BOMSS incorporates endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty into the National Bariatric Surgery Registry

The British Obesity & Metabolic Specialist Society (BOMSS) has revealed that endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) procedural data will be incorporated into the Society’s National Bariatric Surgery Registry (NBSR).

“The NBSR was originally set up as an audit tool in 2008 to record bariatric operations and originally it was voluntary. However, to bring the NBSR in line with the regulatory environment, in 2013 it became mandatory for all data from all NHS bariatric cases to be collected and reported to the registry. Since 2013, this data has been used to produce a yearly report on consultant outcomes (Consultant Outcome Publication). The idea is that we produce data which shows the outcomes of individual consultants and individual units,” explained Mr Omar Khan, a Consultant Surgeon at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London. “That’s the audit aspect of the NBSR, but there’s an increasing aspect in which we’re trying to use the database to potentially answer prospective and retrospective research questions.”

The first iteration of the NBSR recorded data on gastric bands, sleeve, bypass and biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch (BPD/DS) operations. Over the years, the registry has evolved to include additional procedures such as gastric balloons and one anastomosis gastric bypass, reflecting the changes in real-world bariatric practice.

“We have always been quite proactive in the NBSR so that it includes newer procedures. Originally, the NBSR was a surgical registry as part of BOMSS, which was then a surgical society. Now that BOMSS is no longer just a surgical society, it’s a metabolic specialist society, we are now looking to expand our repertoire of activity and we’re also looking to expand our membership, for all practitioners who treat obesity. We are eager that the NBSR captures as much data as possible and one of the barriers for us collecting ESG data was that gastroenterologists who were doing this procedure, were not members of BOMSS. Now that we’ve made it quite explicit with our name change that we’re no longer a surgical society, but a specialist society, we thought this was a good opportunity to try and emphasise that. And one of the ways we’re doing that is by trying to emphasise the non-surgical endoscopic aspects of our registry.”

The ESG part of the NBSR, like other procedures on the registry, will record patient demographics, the number of procedures, outcomes (eg weight loss) and complications, as well as which specialists are performing ESG.

“Established procedures such gastric sleeve and bypass have been around for about 20 to 30 years, and so an awful lot of the research questions have been answered. Including ESG into the NBSR, now give us an opportunity to actually get some more detailed information on the quality of life (QoL) post-ESG, so we are adding a significant amount of additional QoL information regarding this procedure. The aim is to try and work with industry, not only to say the procedure is safe, but to do some detailed QoL analysis. Data entry is voluntary and every data field does not have to be filled in, but we’re encouraging people to complete as much of the dataset as possible, as part of this prospective audit.”

“Collecting UK data on ESG in the NBSR is so important, so we can understand real world outcomes in the UK patient population, develop prospective trials, but it should also provide a further evidence base enabling the wider global adoption of ESG,” said Mr Jamie Kelly, an Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeon at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK. “I look forward to contributing our ESG data to the NBSR so we can learn more about the effectiveness of the procedure and how we can use the data to treat more patients with obesity.”