Weight Loss Surgery effecting Diabetes

Benefits of bariatric weight loss surgery are well established for maintaining sustainable weight loss. Recent research has shown that bariatric surgery not only affects weight loss, but surgery can also help reduce or eliminate specific diseases. One disease in particular includes controlling diabetes, a disease resulting from high blood sugar. Many health problems can result from uncontrolled blood sugar levels including kidney failure, blindness, and problems in blood circulation. With nearly 90 percent of people who are newly diagnosed with diabetes being obese, bariatric surgery can play a critical role when choosing how to cure diabetes. Recent studies have suggested that bariatric surgery either alone or combined with medical therapy can be more effective than medical therapy alone.  Furthermore, bariatric surgery treatment can regulate and improve blood sugar levels, eliminate the need for medication, and lower the risk of diabetes related complications.

Cost Benefits

Bariatric surgery not only benefits the outcome of people who have diabetes, but having surgery also proves to be more cost effective.  People who are diagnosed with diabetes experience greater health related problems. For example, some complications of diabetes could be: renal failure and need for dialysis, retinopathy, neuropathy, dementia and cognitive decline, cardiac issues amongst others. These patients can experience health benefits with bariatric surgery in terms of quality of life, life expectancy and future health care cost prevention. Without choosing weight loss surgery, patients with diabetes could experience lifelong disease and increasing healthcare costs due to outpatient care, medications, diabetes-related hospitalizations, and surgeries.

Procedures

Two major types of procedures are gastric restrictive procedures and intestinal bypass procedures. Gastric restrictive procedures include laparoscopic banding, sleeve gastrectomy, and vertical gastroplasty. Restrictive procedures limit gastric size and restrict calorie intake. Intestinal bypass procedures include roux-en-Y gastric bypass and biliopancreatic diversion. These procedures also decreases caloric intake with the addition of shortening the small intestine.  Patients have experienced great results on their diabetes from intestinal and gastric procedures. Continuing research is being done to study how these results and benefits work on reversing diabetes.

Bariatric Surgery Results

After bariatric surgery, patients were seen to lose more weight compared to traditional weight loss methods. According to the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, over 30 studies find that bariatric surgery cures diabetes. In recent findings, people who underwent gastric banding combined with therapy achieved remission five times more than standard therapy alone.  In addition, bariatric procedures such as gastric banding, gastric bypass, gastroplasty, and others have been shown to resolve diabetes in 80 percent of patients involved in a Journal of the American Medical Association study.

We invite you to make an appointment with Dr. Shillingford who performs a wide variety of weight loss surgeries in Boca Raton, Florida. These procedures include lap band, gastric bypass, and sleeve gastrectomy. It has been shown through various research methods that weight loss surgery can help reduce the burden diabetes brings to patients and their families.