Morbid obesity should be treated with weight loss surgery and regeneration should be performed one year later

Being too fat or too thin will both reduce a woman’s chances of getting pregnant. Doctors point out that due to hormone disruption, some morbidly obese patients have multiple ovarian cysts and were unable to ovulate normally. After weight loss surgery, their ovulation also improved. If they do not use contraceptives, they are often surprised in a short period of time that “I didn’t expect it to be so easy to get pregnant!” However, it is generally recommended to wait one year after weight loss surgery before getting pregnant to avoid reduced food absorption and insufficient nutrition for the fetus.

Being overweight will reduce a woman's chances of getting pregnant. Many morbidly obese patients have multiple ovarian cysts. After weight loss surgery, their ovulation improves and they are able to become pregnant successfully.

Huang Zhikun, director of the International Weight Loss and Diabetes Surgery Center of E-Da Hospital, said that clinically, about 10% of patients seek help from the weight loss clinic due to infertility. Most of them are obese and have multiple ovarian cysts. These patients are often severely obese since puberty and have very irregular menstruation. They need to take hormonal drugs for a long time to promote ovulation, and they will not ovulate once they stop taking the drugs. The lack of normal ovulation leads to infertility.

Dr. Huang Zhikun pointed out that weight is correlated with infertility, but for patients with general obesity and multiple ovarian cysts, it is still recommended to use medical methods to lose weight; for morbid obesity with a BMI of more than 35, it is recommended to use bariatric surgery to actively lose weight. Common surgical options include gastric bypass, gastric band folding, and gastric reduction.

The common principle of weight loss surgery is to reduce food absorption, especially in the first year when weight loss is very rapid. Dr. Huang Zhikun pointed out that after dealing with the problem of morbid obesity, many patients become pregnant soon after losing weight because of their normal ovulation and long-term infertility and lack of contraceptive habits.

Use contraception first in the first year after surgery

However, even if you want to lose weight to get pregnant, it is generally recommended that those who have undergone weight loss surgery wait until the first year before trying to get pregnant. Dr. Huang Zhikun said that weight loss surgery will reduce the body's absorption of food, and the patient herself must adapt to the rapid weight loss and needs vitamin supplements. If you get pregnant at this time, the fetus may be less nourished.

However, avoiding pregnancy in the first year after surgery is not an absolute contraindication. If the patient still becomes pregnant unexpectedly, she will generally be reminded to supplement more vitamins and proteins to avoid the fetus being too light.

Dr. Huang Zhikun said that currently all weight loss surgeries are performed using laparoscopy, and the surgical site is only in the gastrointestinal tract, so if the patient becomes pregnant later, she can still choose natural childbirth. However, he reminded that there are many factors that affect conception, especially long-term obesity will also cause a burden on other organs, so such patients should still control their weight as early as possible.