Santiago Horgan, MD, briefly describes weight-loss surgery for resolution of type 2 diabetes. Gastric sleeve (sleeve gastrectomy) and gastric bypass are excellent options for patients with type 2 diabetes or other obesity-related conditions.
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. Type 2 diabetes can reduce life expectancy up to 14 years.
Lifestyle intervention is 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 is dangerous and increases 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
Understanding Diabetes
Weight-loss surgery is not a treatment for type 1 diabetes. Learn about type 1 and type 2 diabetes and the impact of high blood sugar.
Diabetes care at UC San Diego Health
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:
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.