The following is a guest blog post from Kate Jantz, advanced registered nurse practitioner, with Via Christi Weight Management:
Two new studies on weight-loss surgery have been noted in the media this week regarding Type 2 diabetes improvement and resolution after gastric bypass surgery.
One trial is from the Cleveland Clinic and the other from the Catholic University in Rome, Italy. Both trials were presented in The New England Journal of Medicine and support a significant role for gastric bypass in treating Type 2 diabetes. These bariatric surgery studies are the first to go head-to-head against medical therapy. They conclude that bariatric surgery is superior to medical treatment producing diabetes remission prior to weight loss.
According to Brent Lancaster, MD, medical director of Via Christi’s Surgical Weight Management Program, “we have definitely seen this profound effect in our gastric bypass patients. Two years after surgery, 96.6 percent of our patients with Type 2 diabetes benefit from improvement or resolution”. The remission rate, noted in one of the studies at the Cleveland Clinic, is 40 percent remission one year after gastric bypass surgery.
Robin Blackstone, president of the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery says these groundbreaking studies will have a major impact on the future of diabetes treatment as clinicians, patients, government officials and insurers absorb the data and its implications.”
Read the story of Tammy Metzger Stone, who lost more than 140 pounds after undergoing bariatric surgery with Via Christi’s Surgical Weight Management Program.
