Research
Hormonal
Patients who use anti-obesity medications (AOMs) prior to surgery experience significant weight regain (average 18 kg) upon discontinuation, yet this experience does not change their expectation of weight loss from surgery.
If you stop taking weight loss drugs, you will likely regain most of the weight you lost (average 18kg). This is common. However, this experience does not mean you are destined to fail surgery. Many patients use surgery to achieve greater weight loss than drugs alone, and some even use drugs after surgery to enhance results.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Of past AOMs receipients, 87% reported weight regain upon stopping AOMs. Average weight regain was 18 kg (SD 13kg, 126% increase).
Why this rating
Self-reported data from a cross-sectional survey.
Source
Patients experience with preoperative use of anti-obesity medications and associations with bariatric surgery expectations
Jason M. Samuels et al. · medRxiv · 2024
DOI 10.1101/2024.04.14.24305798
preprint · n=105
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Prior use of anti-obesity medications (AOMs) does not alter patient motivations for seeking bariatric surgery, as patients prioritize health and longevity regardless of prior pharmaceutical weight loss attempts.Moderate
- Patients prefer surgical weight loss over medical interventions, even when medical interventions offer similar weight loss, but are willing to use adjuvant AOMs post-surgery for additional loss.Moderate
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