Technologies

An innovative tool to assess the psychosocial status of patients undergoing bariatric surgery

The Toronto BIPASS tool addresses a growing clinical need in obesity care. Bariatric surgery is now recognized as a durable treatment for severe obesity; however, patients require a comprehensive assessment to identify potential challenges for post-surgery lifestyle and diet adherence that could interfere with the health benefits of surgery. For many clinicians, the high rates of psychiatric co-morbidity and psychological burden in bariatric surgery candidates have complicated pre-bariatric surgery “readiness” or “suitability” assessments. Although best practice guidelines recommend psychological or psychiatric assessment prior to bariatric surgery to identify potential contraindications and readiness barriers, many programs lack sufficient resources and tools to provide timely, accurate and comprehensive assessments.

To date, there are only a few tools available to guide bariatric surgery psychiatric and psychological assessment and none have been validated against expert assessment. There is a lack of interprofessionally focused tools that could be used across the spectrum of bariatric surgery healthcare professionals.

The Toronto BIPASS tool is the first of its kind. It was developed through an international consultation process involving psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, dietitians, nurses and surgeons experienced in bariatric surgery care from across the world. The BIPASS tool has growing validity evidence and the tool has established cut-offs to systematically guide suitability assessment based on comparison with experts in pre-bariatric surgery psychosocial assessment. The tool is an easy-to-use, interprofessional clinical tool that can enhance psychosocial assessment before bariatric surgery in programs struggling with determining suitability for bariatric surgery.