Bariatric Analysis and Reporting Outcome System (BAROS): Toward the Uniform Assessment of Bariatric Surgery Outcomes

p i n c i q Continuous evaluation of our medical or surgical practice is essential to ensure we are providing high quality care to our patients. Nonetheless, to measure the outcomes of our practice we need to use a standardized and valid method that allows us to monitor our practice and to compare our practice with the practice of others. The evaluation of results in bariatric surgery is complicated by the lack of standards for comparison, the use of different parameters to report weight loss, and the multiple definitions of success and failure in the literature. Surgeons have traditionally used weight loss as the main postoperative outcome, although it has become very clear that the improvement of medical conditions associated with obesity and the quality of life should be included in the final analysis. Another controversial issue is how to account for reoperations due to complications or unsatisfactory weight loss in the final assessment of results, because many surgeons consider a reoperation as a failure, while others do not. The Bariatric Analysis and Reporting Outcome System (BAROS) was developed by NIH Consensus Conference panelists at 1998 to answer a need for a standardized method