Tag Archives: diabetes complications

Bariatric Surgery Reduces Microvascular Complications of Type 2 Diabetes

bariatric surgery, Steve Parker MD

Band Gastric Bypass Surgery (not the only type of gastric bypass): very successful at “curing” T2 diabetes if you survive the operation

Folks with T2 diabetes who undergo weight-loss surgery (bariatric surgery) often see a reversal or remission of their diabetes. The reversal doesn’t always last.

In either case, bariatric surgery does seem to reduce the risk if microvascular complications, namely retinopathy (eye disease), neuropathy (nerve pain or numbness), and nephropathy (kidney disease).

The conclusion of a recent study:

“Our results indicate that remission of type 2 diabetes after bariatric surgery confers benefits for risk of incident microvascular disease even if patients eventually experience a relapse of their type 2 diabetes. This provides support for a legacy effect of bariatric surgery, where even a transient period of surgically induced type 2 diabetes remission is associated with lower long-term microvascular disease risk.”

Source: Long-term Microvascular Disease Outcomes in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes After Bariatric Surgery: Evidence for the Legacy Effect of Surgery | Diabetes Care

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Filed under Diabetes Complications

This Is the Best Time Ever to Have Diabetes

Here’s a quote from a recent Diabetes Care:

Improved therapeutics and health care delivery have brought remarkable declines in the incidence of … complications, with a 50% reduction in amputations from their peak in 1997 and ∼35% reduction in the incidence of end-stage renal disease. Similarly, 10-year coronary heart disease risk dropped from 21% in 2000 to 16% in 2008.

Nevertheless, diabetes remains the leading cause of blindness, renal failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputation, in adults 18 to 65 years of age.  We gotta stay after it!

The essay by Dr. Robert Ratner also notes 79 million Americans with prediabetes.  They need my Conquer Diabetes and Prediabetes book.  It’s only $9.99 (USD), a drop in the ocean compared to the $174 billion spent on diabetes in 2007 in the U.S.

—Steve

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Filed under Diabetes Complications, Shameless Self-Promotion