Bariatric Surgery: There Is a Room for Improvement to Reduce Mortality in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

The new Scandinavian Obesity Surgery Registry (SOReg) report may influence current guidelines. Patients without type 2 diabetes (T2DM) prior to bariatric surgery had lower mortality over 6.3 years compared to those with T2DM. Moreover, patients with T2DM who achieved remission within 1 year after surgery had lower mortality than those who did not remit. Finally, there was no threshold at 10 years, but rather a linear relationship between duration of T2DM and glycemic remission. The SOReg report challenges existing recommendations and clinical practice. A case may also be made for patients with T2DM who did not achieve glycemic remission after 1 year to have a combination approach of surgery with medicines rather than surgery alone. Ultimately, the impact of T2DM duration on glycemic remission again suggest that patients with T2DM should have bariatric surgery earlier.