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Diabetes and weight loss surgery
Bariatric Weight loss Surgery for the treatment of Diabetes |
Curing diabetes
mellitus through weight loss surgery
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Diabetes mellitusDespite years of research and millions of dollars, the treatment of diabetes mellitus remains essentially the same as it has for the past fifty years. The mainstay, of course, remains dietary control, including weight control. More or less sugar in the diet, and frequency of meals has changed over time, but little else. There have been new insulins - lente, semilente, ultralente - there has been introduction of the insulin pump, but the need for daily - sometime multiple -- injections of insulin have remained essentially unchanged. There have been, during my professional career, widely varying opinions and enthusiasm for the tightness of diabetic control. When I was a medical student loose control was widely practiced, except for mainly the Joslin Clinic, which advocated tight control. Now tighter control is more widely accepted. With this, the testing of sugar in the urine has been replaced with finger stick blood sugars and multiple daily injections of insulin. Those who have so called type II diabetes mellitus have benefited from new oral agents, but this does not solve the underlying problem. Despite great advances, pancreatic organ transplantation is not within the reach of the vast majority of diabetes sufferers, nor is it likely to be within the near future. These facts are partly what make weight loss surgery so appealing to me. Bariatric surgery offers a highly successful way of curing or ameliorating diabetes mellitus. This fact has gone largely unrecognized by the public and health care workers. Among morbidly obese patients undergoing weight loss surgery there is an approximately 80-98% cure of their diabetes mellitus. About 90% of type II diabetics are overweight. In terms of just diabetes alone, and forgetting about the other comorbidities associated with morbid obesity, a >80% cure rate of a serious illness with surgery is outstanding. This far exceeds the cure rate for many commonly performed operations, such as surgery for cancer of the pancreas and esophagus, or even some stages of breast and colon cancer. Kidney, heart, lung or pancreatic transplant surgeons would give anything to have a 90% success rate in their lines of work!Curing Diabetes Mellitus
through Weight Loss Surgery, although it means dietary control
of a different sort, means an end to insulin injections, oral agents,
and frequent testing of blood sugar. More importantly, it means an end
to the devastating complications of this serious disease - blindness,
amputations, neuropathy, stroke, heart attack, and life itself cut short
before seeing children grow up, or dreams of retirement fulfilled.
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Information About Bariatric Weight Loss Surgeries: [New York Bariatrics -
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