MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Bariatric surgery cut the diabetes risk by as much as 80% when used to treat obese patients, according to a new study.
The Swedish Obese Subjects study, which followed nearly 3,500 obese patients for 15 years, about half of which underwent bariatric surgery, either with gastric banding, vertical banded gastroplasy or gastric bypass.
Of the patients who stayed with the study and those who had reached the 15-year observation mark by the time the study was prepared for publication, about 110 in the bariatric surgery group had developed Type II diabetes, compared with 392 in the control group, Heartwire reported.
"The important message of the study is that we can prevent type 2 diabetes if we perform bariatric surgery on obese patients. This is the first paper describing this, and the effects we report are very, very strong," lead author Dr. Lena Carlsson told Heartwire.
"This risk reduction is at least twice as large as that observed with lifestyle interventions in moderately obese, prediabetic persons," according to the study’s authors.
There were important differences in the bariatric surgery group and the control group, including higher baseline body weight and diabetes risk in the bariatric surgery group, but the results are "both provocative and exciting," according to Dr. Danny Jacobs, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.
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