Obesity Treatment by Bariatric Surgery and Some of the Pharmacoeconomical Aspects in the Czech Republic

Background: Obesity affects one in four people in the Czech Republic and its incidence is growing worldwide. In this article we focused on evaluation of treatment of obesity in diabetic patients by bariatric surgery and we also tried to evaluate the costs of the surgery and antidiabetics. Methods: The total number of patients was 200 and 30 of them with type 2 diabetes mellitus. In the 1-year followup we evaluated remission or compensation of diabetes in patients after particular bariatric methods. We also calculated the decrease of average costs for pharmacotherapy by antidiabetics after 6 and 12 months and the costs for the bariatric surgery. Results: We found that costs for the treatment by antidiabetics were reduced nearly 3× already in the 6th month after the surgery. Insurance companies currently do not take in consideration different costs for the partial surgery methods and the payment is in one package for approx. 60 thousands CZK. Conclusion: The positive effect of the surgery appeared in the 6th month of the follow-up. However, to achieve more accurate results we need to evaluate the data after 3 years of the follow-up.