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About the NBSR

The registry began as a consortium by BOMSS, AUGIS and ALS. By early 2008 the bariatric community in Britain had been wrestling for some years with the establishment of a national audit registry. At the outset without the initiative, drive and financial commitment shown by the Association of Laparoscopic Surgeons the registry would not have come into being when it did. The vision and generosity with which ALS invited AUGIS and BOMSS to join as equal partners set the scene for what had proved to be a harmonious and fruitful tripartite collaboration, and this was to the singular credit of Michael Parker, President of the ALS at the time.

The creation of the registry database, the choice of dataset and of the embedded functionality were the solo achievement of Richard Welbourn, working with the programmers and analysts at Dendrite Clinical Systems. The scale of this work cannot be overvalued, nor can the good nature and responsiveness with which they faced the inevitability of not pleasing all of the people all of the time.

Alberic Fiennes, president of BOMSS at the time wrote: “In playing my own very small part in the preparation of this report I have become intensely aware of the experience, patience and tireless skill of the senior personnel at Dendrite, most notably, but not exclusively, Robin Kinsman, Chief Data Analyst, and Peter Walton, Managing Director. Theirs has been a truly professional and accomplished act. It has been the greatest pleasure to work closely with them and with Richard Welbourn, as well as with my colleagues on the Data Committee as a whole… I am indebted for the enthusiasm and hard work displayed by all committee members”

They have dealt with difficult issues of confidentiality, of professional duty and of securing trust and participation. They have dealt jointly with well-intended enquiries that inadvertently threatened these integrities and have fought and extinguished a few unexpected if minor fires. The Committee in turn owes gratitude to our parent Societies for their trust and support. The release of the present Report represents the summation of that commitment.

However, there would be no report without the trust and enthusiasm shown by contributing clinical teams and their host institutions. It is the Committee’s belief that we achieved about 80% participation by all bariatric surgeons practising in the United Kingdom. The exceptionally low mortality and morbidity, together with the weight-loss and co-morbidity resolution reported in the following pages is a tribute to their skill.

By proxy and on their behalf the Data Committee would like to thank firstly the Royal College of Surgeons of England for its invaluable institutional and professional support and secondly all those industrial partners whose financial support has made the process possible at all.

The nature of the current pandemic of Severe and Complex Obesity, the associated science and the professional imperatives arising are considered elsewhere in the 2010 reports, together with a brief appraisal of current bariatric treatment. At this point, however, the final word must be for our patients, past and future: we thank them for the confidence placed in us.

Let all who read this report bear witness that people locked into Severe and Complex Obesity are not the undeserving weak, as they are often branded, but the victims, in their phalanxes, of an often misunderstood but lethal disease of civilisation – perhaps the biggest disease of the early 21st Century.

The current NBSR Committee:

Mr Richard Welbourn (Chairman)

Mr Simon Dexter

Mr Peter Small

Mr Marcus Reddy

Mr Peter Sedman

Mr Shaw Somers

Mr Ian Finlay

Mr Omar Khan

Mr James Hopkins