Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Some patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery (MBS) may transfer to another hospital for subsequent procedures. Due to legal constraints imposed by privacy regulations on inter-hospital data sharing, limited research has examined the characteristics and outcomes of these patients. This study aimed to identify the frequency and factors associated with hospital transfer using a novel privacy-enhancing approach based on secure multi-party computation (MPC). METHODS: All primary and secondary MBS procedures registered in the Dutch Audit for Treatment of Obesity between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2022, were considered. MPC enabled privacy-preserving linkage of surgeries across different hospitals. Patients undergoing secondary surgery in the same or a different hospital were compared on patient and treatment characteristics and outcomes of primary MBS to investigate associations with hospital transfer. RESULTS: Two thousand three hundred eighty-two patients with data on both primary and secondary MBS were identified. A minority (n = 275; 11.5%) underwent their second procedure elsewhere. At baseline, these patients on average were younger (37.9 vs. 42.5, p < 0.001), less often had hypertension or GERD, and had similar BMI (43.9 vs 43.9, p = 0.89) compared with those who stayed. At secondary surgery, the BMI of patients transferring hospitals on average was lower (39.0 vs. 43.0, p < 0.001), and the indication was more often recurrent weight gain (49.0% vs. 23.0%, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: A minority of patients (1 in 9) transferred to a different hospital for secondary MBS. These patients were generally younger and had fewer obesity-related diseases. Although they presented with a lower BMI at the time of secondary surgery, they more frequently sought surgery for recurrent weight gain.