Weight Loss Surgeries

More healthcare providers are recommending the use of medical intervention for weight loss. Read on and be ready for that conversation.

- Jennifer Larson

More than 60 per cent of Australian adults are overweight or obese. As this number continues to skyrocket, so does the number of people developing type 2 diabetes and other diseases related to excess weight.

Experts routinely advise overweight and obese people with type 2 diabetes to lose weight. Shedding a few kilos – or more – can improve your condition significantly.

But increasingly, some experts recommend weight-loss surgeries – called metabolic and bariatric surgeries in medical parlance – to achieve weight loss and glucose control if other strategies aren’t working. This field is evolving fast.

But it’s no quick fix. Let’s talk through the options, and the risks and benefits, to consider for each type of procedure.

Surgeries and procedures

According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) – similar results have been seen in other global studies – surgery can improve type 2 diabetes in 90 per cent of patients and cause remission of type 2 in 78 per cent of them. (Remission occurs when a person can maintain normal blood glucose levels without taking medications.)

In fact, weight-loss surgery is now considered a standard treatment option for people with type 2 diabetes, based on a statement of 45 professional organisations from around the world, including the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the International Diabetes Federation, and Diabetes UK. In June 2016, the ADA’s journal, Diabetes Care, published the first clinical guidelines for weight-loss surgery as a treatment for people with type 2 diabetes.

Definitions for the most common bariatric and metabolic surgeries and procedures follow.