Surgery for Diabetes (Metabolic Surgery)

Diabetes is a very dangerous health problem that happens to many people around the world. In fact, it is so dangerous that someone dies in this world every ten seconds from complications related to diabetes, and it is considered one of the top ten diseases that lead to death in the United States of America. In addition, diabetes happens to all people whether children, old people, both women and men.

In general, Diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts like a key to let the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy. 

Diabetes has three main types:

  1. Type 1 diabetes: this type of diabetes can develop at any age, but mostly occur to children at young ages. The bodies of patients who complain of this type of diabetes produce very little amounts of insulin, thus they need more insulin and they can get it by insulin injections.
  2. Type 2 diabetes: this type of diabetes is the most famous one and occurs in more than 90% of diabetes patients. In this type of diabetes the body cannot use the insulin right which causes so many bad health problems that might lead to death.
  3. Gestational diabetes: this type of diabetes usually occurs during pregnancy from both mother and child, the diabetes leaves after pregnancy but the chances of it occurring to the child are very high. 

Surgical Treatments for Diabetes

There are surgical solutions for diabetes like bariatric surgeries or metabolic surgeries:

Bariatric surgery

Since sugar level and blood pressure are two main factors to control diabetes, then bariatric surgery can solve this problem. The bariatric surgery actually provide a healthy life style to the patient and prohebit him of consuming much food that may result in high sugar level. Also, the obesity is a direct reason of blood pressure and blood illnesses. Thus, when a patient do a bariatric surgery he or she will be able to solve this problem also. In general, there are many types of bariatric surgery:

The bariatric surgery improves type 2 diabetes in almost 90% of the patients by:

  1. decrease blood sugar levels
  2. decreasing th dosage and need of required medication
  3. improving health problems that are related to diabetes type 2

In addition, bariatric surgeries are able to cause diabetes type 2 to go into remission in almost 78% of patients. Thus, bariatric surgeries in all of its types are very important for patients who complain of diabetes.

Benefits and Risks

As we mentioned before, bariatric surgeries help patients to defeat diabetes type 2 by dealing with its main factors like blood sugar and pressure. Of course it is a weight loss surgery but because of the way it operates, the healthy life style it offer, and the fact that it forces the patient to consume very less amount of food and sugar so it solves the main problem.

Of course there are some risks for the bariatric surgery just like any other surgery. However, each patient is a different case with a different situation which means that each patient should be tested carefully to understand what possibly can be a side effect. 

Who is qualified to do bariatric surgery?

Of course, not all patients can do this surgery, there are some rules for that:

  • it is recommended to be done when a patient scores more than 40KG/m2 in BMI index even if the diabetes is controlled by medications.
  • it can be done if a patient scores between 35-39.9 in BMI index and the diabetes is not controlled by medications
  • it is considerable to be done if a patient scores between 30-35 in BMI index and diabetes is not controlled well by medications.

Still, doctors should test the patient carefully and study his or her situation before making any decisions because each patient has a unique case and numbers. Thus, we highly recommend all patients to consult their own personal doctors and give them all information and details including medical health reports because every small detail is very important in this surgery and can be used to avoid any risk or side effect or used to increase the rates of success.

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