Bariatric surgery is a durable means to achieve weight loss. Changes in access to care and consideration of cost are important considerations to procedure selection. Not all patients achieve the weight loss desired, and there is some controversy surrounding whether weight loss or improvement of comorbid illness should be the principle outcome target. Ultimately careful patient selection will maximize best outcomes and decrease some of the complications after those procedures.

The purpose of this supplement understands patient factors that impact outcome and thus allow for more appropriate procedural matching. Indeed there are some patients that may not benefit from surgery at all. We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Absolute contraindications to bariatric surgery
• Definitions of failure and success in bariatric surgery
• Genetic factors that impact weight loss
• Nongenetic predictors of weight loss
• Impact of different procedures on weight loss
• Impact of different procedures on comorbid illness improvement
• Incidence of readmission by procedure
• Putting it all together matching the right patient to the right operation

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: