[sunshinein]

My mom is considering gastric bypass surgery - she is a long time diabetic, and is wondering whether the procedure might help control her illness.

I just found this article on it:

“A Weighty Decision” From Leslie Goldman’s “The Weighting Game” at Her Active Life

...and wondered whether anyone else had taken similar steps, and had any insight or other resources.

Thanks!

[princesslinda]

There have been a few posts here before regarding gastric bypass..not sure that we have anyone whose done it though. From what i've read about it, those who do the best diabetes-wise (being able to come off meds and have normal blood sugars) are those who have had diabetes for only a few years, as opposed to long-time diabetics.

In the urology office I work at, we see several patients with kidney stones after gastric bypass, possibly caused by "short-gut" syndrome. These people had no hx of it before gastric bypass.

Has your mom tried losing weight on her own, or with Weight-Watchers or some other diet support group? As someone who was very overweight at diagnosis (70+ lbs ago), and is still overweight, it does get very frustrating.

I have a co-worker who went to one of the gastric bypass meetings in our area. She was saying that the speaker at the meeting said anyone considering it (in our city anyway) has to undergo a monitored weight loss plan and lose 10% of their weight before being considered for the surgery and also has to have psychological testing and even after surgery has to be part of a monitored weight loss/exercise plan.

[volleyball]

Depending on her age and weight, you may find bypass not all its cracked up to be. You have to take pills forever, you could end up with a lot of skin folds or open sores. Plus if you don't control your eating, you could gain all the weight back

[notme]

My mother was pre-D and decided to lose weight. She lost well over 100 pounds and she now has perfect blood sugar.

I am sure in some cases gastric bypass is necessary. I do think if there is ANY way to avoid it, I would.

[REDLAN]

Before considering such surgery, there are 2 things that need to be borne in mind.

1) The reports showing that bariatric surgery reverse diabetes are a relatively new finding - a great deal more research is required to show that such a reversal is sustainable in the long term. As of yet the researchers have not managed to show that the improvement in type 2 diabetes is not simply due to extreme calorie restriction.

2) Bariatric surgery is a risky procedure, and the older you are, the more overweight you are the more risky the procedure is. <unfortunately the link is dead at the moment> but a study performed by Dr. Flum and published in the JAMA, looked at the outcomes for 16,000 bariatric surgery patients - those aged 35-54 had a one year mortality of 4.6%, 65-74 the mortality after 1 year in women was 6%, once over 75 the mortality rate for women rose to 40% (men experienced significantly higher mortality than woman) - just to compare coronary bypass has a mortality rate of 2.6% (and is done on older and sicker patients).

Bariatric surgerys also experience high rates of complications, and patients frequently require further surgery - for instance 23% of gastric bypasses need further correctional surgery, and gastric bypasses are done because they are considered safer than the banding type surgeries.

If you are very obese your risk of dying is around 0.5% per year - seems to me the surgery is much more risky than staying overweight.