Volume 77, Number 7
Bariatric surgery for type 2 diabetes:
Weighing the impact for obese patients
1. A 50-year-old white morbidly obese woman with a body mass index (BMI) of 41 kg/m2, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and type 2 diabetes mellitus presents to ask if she is a candidate for bariatric surgery. Which of the following statements is most correct?
- Because of her type 2 diabetes, she is a good candidate for bariatric surgery
- Roux-en-Y gastric bypass would give her the best odds of having her diabetes go into remission but also poses a greater risk of perioperative death
- If she undergoes laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding, her diabetes would improve rapidly, and her hyperlipidemia and hypertension would have a greater than 50% chance of resolving
- It is hard to predict her benefit from bariatric surgery because the studies were conducted mainly in white men
- Compared with biliopancreatic diversion, gastric bypass surgery would give her more than an 80% likelihood of achieving remission of her diabetes and hypertension, with less than half the risk of perioperative death.
