Surgery on Diabetics May Be Better Than Standard Treatment

For some people with diabetes, surgery may be the best medicine.

Two studies have found that weight loss operations worked much better than the standard treatments to control Type 2 diabetes in obese and overweight people. Those who had surgery to staple the stomach and reroute the small intestine were much more likely to have their diabetes go into complete remission, or to need less medicine, than people given the typical regimen of drugs, diet and exercise, the studies found. The surgery also helped many to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol.

The new studies, published online on Monday by The New England Journal of Medicine, are among the first to to rigorously compare surgery and medicine as ways to control diabetes. Doctors have noticed for years that weight loss operations, also called bariatric surgery, sometimes get rid of Type 2 diabetes.

Better treatments are desperately needed for Type 2 diabetes, experts say. In the United States, the number of diabetes cases has tripled in the past 30 years and now numbers more than 20 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the cases are Type 2. The disease is also becoming more common in much of the world, with devastating complications like heart disease, blindness, amputations and kidney failure.

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