OBJECTIVES: To gain an understanding of the impact of bariatric surgery on the current medical management of obese patients. METHODS: The EGB database is a 1/97 representative sample (around 600,000 individuals) of the national claims database covering the whole French population including outpatients and inpatient care. Adult patients treated for the first time over the period 01/01/2007 to 31/12/2009 by bariatric surgery were identified through related procedures and obesity ICD-10 codes. A cohort of patients was constituted with a 2-year follow-up before and after the index procedure date (T). Reimbursed medical consumption over this 4-year period was recorded and presence of co-morbidities was identified through ICD-10 codes, reimbursement of specific drugs or procedures. RESULTS: 350 patients meeting the selection criteria were identified in the database with a mean age of 38.9 (+/- 11.3) years, 83.4% female and 69.7% had a BMI in the range 40-50. The distribution of patients according to bariatric procedure was gastric banding (62.6%), gastric by-pass (19.7%), sleeve gastrectomy (16.6%) and bilio-pancreatic diversion (1.1%). The annual per capita reimbursed health expenses evolved from 2.633€ (+/-3.124€) in Year (T-2), to 3.557€ (+/-3.380€) in Year (T-1), to 4.240€ (+/-3.840€) in Year (T+1) (excluding procedure cost) to 3.755€ (+/-5.037€) in Year (T+2). In 39% of patients those costs decreased between T-2 and T+2, (>5%) and the only two variables significantly explaining this decrease were the reduction of consumption for anti-Diabetes and/or anti-Hypertension drugs. Most items of medical consumption increased over the period pre and post procedure but started to decrease in Year T+2. CONCLUSIONS: The visits for preparing bariatric surgery were probably an opportunity for those patients to benefit from a general check-up which has generated extra short term medical consumption.  Additional research with longer follow up could better capture the benefits of bariatric surgery on medical consumption.