Diabetes mellitus is originally a medical condition treated with medications. Treatment includes oral hypoglycemic drugs, insulin injections, and diet control. The goal of medication is to control blood glucose and reduce the occurrence of diabetic complications, making a complete cure difficult. However, bariatric surgery has been clinically proven to be effective in treating type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related diseases, with a cure rate of over 80% for type 2 diabetes after surgery. This surprising discovery started the history of surgical treatment of diabetes in humans.
The fact that surgery can treat type 2 diabetes stems from a serendipitous discovery by surgeons. Decades ago, it was common to see obese people with type 2 diabetes in Europe and the United States. Surgeons were amazed to find that after they underwent weight loss surgery, their diabetes was cured at the same time. This discovery gave physicians the important insight that surgery could potentially cure diabetes.
Why does bariatric surgery cure diabetes?
It is not yet clear to the academic community. Most scholars believe that bariatric surgery causes an increase in certain hormones that favor lowering blood glucose, thus allowing diabetes to be cured, along with other metabolic problems such as high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol.
Compared to treating diabetes with expensive medications, the total cost of minimally invasive gastric sleeve resection surgery treatment is about $40,000-$50,000, and half of the cost is reimbursed by health insurance. Most diabetes can be completely cured after surgery, and medication is no longer needed. In recent years, numerous foreign studies have compared surgical and non-surgical treatment of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases and have shown that surgical treatment is superior to traditional medical treatment.
Since diabetes surgery has certain risks after all, and not everyone has good results with surgical treatment. Therefore, it is important to have a careful evaluation by an endocrinologist and bariatric surgeon at a regular public hospital before deciding to have diabetes surgery treatment, and patients are also expected to obtain unanimous consent from key family members before making a decision on surgical treatment. At present, the conditions that make a patient suitable for diabetes surgery are, by and large, age less than 65 years, duration of diabetes less than 15 years, fair function of pancreatic islet cells, and a body mass index of at least 27.5. Surgery is not recommended for type 1 diabetes, gestational diabetes, complications such as severe heart, lung, and brain disease and kidney failure, as well as those with severe mental and psychological disorders.