News article: Bariatric surgery challenges the perception of Type 2 diabetes as a chronic condition

Sunday, June 21, 2009 by Andy Pollen
This article from Endocrine Today, highlights one of the ongoing discussions about how bariatric surgery has been proven to cure Type 2 diabetes. We've discussed this topic on the blog before and I would encourage anyone with the disease to talk with your physician about how weight loss surgery may help your condition. The first few paragraphs are below and full text can be found here.

A surgeon argued today that the criteria for bariatric surgery should be changed, allowing more overweight people to undergo the procedure.

Even though there is a 92% reduction in diabetes-specific mortality risk after gastric bypass, only a small percentage of patients who could benefit are eligible to undergo the procedure, Francesco A. Rubino, MD, said. Those with a BMI greater than 40 are eligible for the procedure; those with a BMI greater than 35 are eligible only if comorbidities are present. “These criteria should change,” he said.

Rubino, chief of gastrointestinal metabolic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and head of the Diabetes Surgery Center at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical College, also argued that the success of gastric bypass surgery “challenges the idea that diabetes is chronic and irreversible.”

The outcomes of the surgical procedure suggest an intestinal contribution to diabetes pathophysiology. Diabetes may be a “dysfunction of the bowel,” he said.


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