Adjustable gastric banding helps lose weight and remit diabetes

For individuals who have been unable to achieve significant weight loss through diet modifications and exercise programs alone, bariatric surgery (or weight loss surgery) may help to attain a more healthy body weight. And also may help to cure diabetes.

Photo: Adjustable gastric banding helps lose weight and remit diabetes

A new study reported that weight loss has direct influence upon diabetes remission.

Previous studies showed that this kind of operation may only reduce the incidence of diabetes in patients. The purpose of the new study – to find out whether patients do as well when they undergo the less drastic gastric lap-band surgery, a procedure in which a band is placed around the upper stomach, limiting the amount of passing food.

Adjustable gastric banding, or Lap band surgery, is a form of restrictive weight loss surgery (bariatrics) designed for obesity patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or greater - or between 35 – 40 with those who have comorbidities that are known to improve with weight loss. The gastric band is an inflatable silicone prosthetic device which is placed around the top portion of the stomach via keyhole laparoscopic surgery.

The researchers selected 55 diabetes patients with body-mass indexes between 30 and 40 (30 – a few pounds more than usual weight, above 40 - at least 100 pounds overweight). One group underwent a surgery, another tried to lose weight with the help of diets and physical exercises.

After two years, in the group of surgery patients 22 out of 30 showed diabetes remission and on the whole achieved the loss of 20.7 percent of their body weight and in the second group only 4 out of 30 showed the same results with only 1.7 percent of weight loss.

But the essence proved to lie not in the method of weight loss but in the amount of it. If the amount of lost weight was identical in both groups, the results in the field of diabetes remission would have been the same.

For those who prefer the alternative way of weight loss (operation) the only handicap may be the price (not speaking about risk). The surgery is extremely expensive, it costs an average of $18,000 in the United States.