Gastric-Bypass Surgery: Cure for Diabetes?

MYFOXNY.COM - Type 2 diabetes can put patients at risk for high blood pressure and can lead to heart attack and stroke. Each year nearly 250,000 Americans die of the disease.

Many doctors find that gastric-bypass surgery can effectively put diabetes into remission. Indeed, eight months ago, Tom Pallozzi-Haynes had gastric bypass surgery to cure his type 2 diabetes. At the time he weighed 273 pounds.

"I've lost 90 pounds and I am able to run around with my 3-year-old, it's a whole new lease on life," he says. He no longer needs to take any medications to control his diabetes.

Dr. Francesco Rubino is a gastrointestinal surgeon at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He was the first researcher to provide scientific evidence that gastric-bypass operations can cause diabetes to go into remission, even if a patient is not obese.

"The gastrointestinal track, the stomach the bowel, they produce so many hormones that are involved in the regulation of blood sugar and insulin production as well so it should not surprise that when we change the anatomy of this organ we have an effect on diabetes," Dr. Rubino says. He has seen some dramatic improvements in patients who have had the surgery.

There are risks, however.

"Patients should not take it lightly because it is surgery there are risks involved," Dr. Rubino says. "But it is not a radical form of treatment for a disease that kills patients."

At present, the surgery is being used on patients who are morbidly obese and is being used in clinical trials for people who are moderately obese. Doctors hope the surgery can eventually be used on diabetics who aren't obese.