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©The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Jan 27, 2026; 18(1): 113753
Published online Jan 27, 2026. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v18.i1.113753
Published online Jan 27, 2026. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v18.i1.113753
Impact of multidisciplinary steatotic liver disease management on bariatric surgery referral and clinical outcomes: A retrospective cohort study
Andrew W Schwartz, Emily Y Park, Zoe E Zimmerman, Bryan Bollinger, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Ysabel C Ilagan-Ying, Wajahat Z Mehal, Albert Do, Bubu A Banini, Section of Digestive Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Lee D Ying, Andrew J Duffy, John M Morton, Department of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Yanhong D Deng, Yale Center for Analytical Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Co-first authors: Andrew W Schwartz and Emily Y Park.
Author contributions: Schwartz AW, Park EY, Zimmerman ZE, and Bollinger B contributed to manuscript drafting; Schwartz A and Park EY contributed equally to this manuscript as co-first authors; Schwartz AW, Park EY, Ilagan-Ying YC, Zimmerman ZE, and Bollinger B contributed to data collection; Schwartz A, Park EY, Zimmerman ZE, and Bollinger B contributions to data analysis; Ilagan-Ying YC, Do A and Banini BA contributed to study formulation; Ilagan-Ying YC, Ying LD, Deng Y, Duffy AJ, Morton JM, and Mehal WZ assisted with critical revision; Do A and Banini BA contributed equally to supervision, data interpretation, and critical revision as co-senior authors. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, No. 5R01DK134624-02 and No. 5P30DK034989-40 8073.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by Human Research Protection Program Institutional Review Boards (approval No. 2000027433).
Informed consent statement: The informed consent was waived by the Institutional Review Board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Banini BA reports work related to being advisory board member for Novo Nordisk and Boehringer Ingelheim, and research grant from Merck & Co., outside the submitted work.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement:
No additional data are available.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Bubu A Banini, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Section of Digestive Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, 40 Temple St, Suite 1A, New Haven, CT 06510, United States. bubu.banini@yale.edu
Received: September 2, 2025
Revised: September 18, 2025
Accepted: December 1, 2025
Published online: January 27, 2026
Processing time: 147 Days and 9.3 Hours
Revised: September 18, 2025
Accepted: December 1, 2025
Published online: January 27, 2026
Processing time: 147 Days and 9.3 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Bariatric surgery should be considered as a therapeutic option in eligible patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). Integration of weight management into a tertiary care center’s MASLD-specific clinic led to substantial improvement in referral rates for bariatric surgery when compared with the national average, with improved weight loss and liver-related outcomes one-year post surgery. Multidisciplinary obesity medicine and hepatology co-management is an effective model for MASLD care and promotes access to bariatric surgery.