Bariatric Surgery for Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity

Obesity is the primary cause for type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes can lead to health problems including stroke, blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, depression, neuropathy and increased cancer risk. It also can reduce life expectancy by up to 14 years.

Lifestyle intervention is the first-line therapy for type 2 diabetes. This includes losing weight, making smarter food choices and being more physically active.

If you are obese and have type 2 diabetes, weight-loss (bariatric) surgery can have a profoundly positive effect on your health. Weight-loss surgery can reverse diabetes and reduce or eliminate the need for diabetes medications.

Uncontrolled high blood sugar and diabetes are dangerous and increase your risk of many serious health problems, including:

• Hypertension
• Heart disease
• Blindness
• Kidney failure
• Periodontal disease
• Depression and fatigue
• Diabetic nerve disease (which can lead to limb amputation)

How Losing Weight Helps

Significant weight loss improves the body’s glycemic control, greatly reducing the potential damaging effects of high blood sugar. As the region’s only academic medical center, UC San Diego Health is developing and performing the most advanced, yet minimally invasive surgical treatments for combating obesity, including:

• Sleeve gastrectomy
• Gastric banding
• Gastric bypass
• Revisional bypass surgery
• Gastric plication

Getting Your Health (and Life) Back

These minimally invasive approaches are helping patients get their lives back by:

Stopping the damage

Improved glycemic control from weight loss can halt the damaging effects of high blood sugar.

Reversing diabetes

Nearly 80 percent of patients with type 2 diabetes who have bariatric surgery go into remission.

Giving back control

A recent study found patients who underwent bariatric surgery were more than three times more likely to gain control over their diabetes after one year, compared to a group treated with medication.