One-off diabetes – surgery instead of lifelong medication
That gastric bypass is a proven method when it comes to weight loss in extremely obese patients is nothing new. However, the healing of type 2 diabetes that is also possible as a result is. Years of experience and observations by surgeons and doctors show that this operation also improves blood sugar levels and has a positive effect on sugar metabolism.
Never again insulin
Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes. In most cases, the disease is initially treated with tablets, but later patients have to inject insulin. As a rule, this must be remembered at every meal, unless long-acting insulin is injected once a day. This is not only annoying and has a massive impact on everyday life, but is often even relatively ineffective. Many patients need more and more units per day, but for some it is never enough to get their blood sugar levels under control, so that they get worse and worse over the long term. Nowadays, to avoid all these inconveniences, one can resort to diabetes surgery. This endoscopic procedure takes only one and a half hours and causes a massive improvement in values in 75 to 95 percent of the cases. This ensures that patients either permanently have to inject less insulin or, in some cases, no insulin at all.
Gastric bypass in diabetes
During the operation, the duodenum is excluded from the food passage and the chyme arrives in the lower intestine more quickly. This causes regulating hormones to be released faster and stronger. In the long term, the weight loss brought about by the operation also ensures that the diabetes regresses.
Although specialists have known for many years that blood sugar levels are favorably influenced by this operation, gastric bypass has so far only been used in obese patients for faster and more stable weight loss. In addition, nowadays it is a proven diabetes surgery that is used for type 2 diabetes and has already achieved many positive results.
statistics and studies
Long-term results are still rare, since the first major evaluation of data is just 22 years old. However, medium-term studies from the USA and Italy show that, depending on the surgical procedure, 40 to 65 percent of patients no longer need any medication or insulin five years after the operation. Others need to take far less than before the procedure.
