In addition, IBSR publication requests were provided to 27 individuals or companies. This usually consists of updating the staff on my contacts for that month and how many new patients are added to the database. This includes how many reoperations have occurred, deaths, and any difficulties that I have found in follow-up. Over the last 20 years, CSTO has been performing bariatric surgery with over 2,200 cases performed since 1992. Because bariatric surgery is a relatively new field, long term follow-up is required.
Some patients are unwilling to cooperate.
So methods to overcome these shortcomings needed to be devised. Follow-up is divided into office visits, support group meetings, and phone visitation. We follow patients at three to six weeks, three to six months, one year and yearly thereafter. On line internet search engines are used to obtain email and street addresses. We also use other doctors' services.