Bariatric Surgery Produces Long-term Benefits in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Nearly 30 years ago, Pories and colleagues published a landmark case series provocatively titled “Who Would Have Thought It? An Operation Proves to Be the Most Effective Therapy for Adult-Onset Diabetes Mellitus.” The operation was the gastric bypass for obesity. The excellent well-controlled study published in this issue of JAMA by Courcoulas and colleagues provides the most robust evidenc e to date of the long-term efficacy of bariatric surgery for improving control of type 2 diabetes. Effective therapies are critically needed for this disease, which affects more than 14% of adults in the US, is associated with a high burden of both physical and mental health complications, and incur s annual direct medical costs of $306.6 billion.
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research