Can This Surgery Cure Diabetes?
Several times a month I find myself delivering bad news to a patient: “You have diabetes.” The follow-up isn’t much better. The patient asks how to make it go away, and my response, often with a wistful sigh, is: “Right now, there’s nothing.”
But that’s not quite the case any longer. Evidence is accumulating that bariatric surgery—an extreme measure for the very obese that involves reducing the size of the stomach to promote weight loss—may “cure” diabetes.