OBJECTIVES: Bariatric surgery is the best long-term treatment for morbid obesity with clinical improves, like reductions in blood pressure, glucose and lipids levels. However postoperative complications and psychosocial issues may impact quality of life (QoL). This study aims to assess health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Brazilian obese patients submitted to bariatric surgery. METHODS: A systematic review was conducted by April 2013 through Cochrane Collaboration, Medline, EMBASE, and Lilacs databases. Studies that described QoL in Brazilian obese patients were included in this review. Bariatric Analysis and Reporting Outcome System (BAROS), Moorehead-Ardelt quality of life questionnaire II (M-A-QoLQII), Abbreviated WHOQoL questionnaire and Short Form-6D (SF-6D) were used to evaluate the behavior of patients who underwent bariatric surgery in relation to QoL domains. RESULTS: Seven studies met eligibility criteria. In all studies, individuals presented body mass index (BMI) ≥ 40kg/m2 or ≥ 35 kg/m2 associated with comorbidities. Patients reported their self-esteem (SE), physical activity (PA), social relations (SR), disposition to work (DW) and sexual activity (SA), after bariatric surgery. According to the M-A-QoLQII, three studies showed HRQoL improvement in 28.9%, 39.5%, 28.4%, 30% and 25.6% of patients for SE, PA, SR, DW and SA, respectively. And 68.9%, 50.6%, 53.1%, 52.2%, 45.6% of patients guaranteed greatly improved regarding those parameters, respectively. After weight loss, bariatric surgery was effective to improve QoL in PA domain. Besides, when compared to patients submitted to medical treatment, patients who underwent surgical procedure presented an improvement of 93% in HRQoL, contrasting with 65.4% of the medical cohort (p<0.001). Only one study measured QoL before and after bariatric surgery: SF-36 domains and M-A-QoLQII showed that post-surgery results were invariably better than pre-surgery ones (p<0.001 for all domains). CONCLUSIONS: The present review demonstrated the potential QoL improvements in Brazilian patients after bariatric surgery, in addition to clinical benefits.