Posts Tagged ‘bariatric surgery’

It is no secret that alcohol use disorder is a risk after metabolic and bariatric surgery. The risk rises as time passes after surgery, with one study finding three percent of patients followed for a median of six years having one alcohol use disorder diagnosis in their medical records. Another study found that three years […]

At the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons this week, six smart people debated the future of metabolic surgery versus medicines in the treatment of obesity. The interest in this debate is unmistakable. Our newsfeed is full of it. The undercurrent seems to be an implicit contest. Which is best? Which will prevail? […]

Today in Nature Medicine, compelling new research tells that long-term outcomes with metabolic surgery are superior to the outcomes with GLP-1 agonists in persons with diabetes and obesity. These are impressive and important results. But we have to wonder if anyone is really listening. The enthusiasm for advanced obesity medicines is so great that many […]

Increasingly, weight bias has gone underground. Explicit fat shaming has become socially unacceptable. But the human impulse behind it has not disappeared. So it pops up in diverse new ways. Like a school district that covers metabolic and bariatric surgery for employees, but requires a $5,000 copay that it refunds to employees only if they […]

A new study in Obesity provides another piece of the puzzle of the influence of PFAS in obesity. PFAS is shorthand for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. People also refer to them as “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in our environment and our bodies. The new study tells us that PFAS exposure in teens having metabolic […]

At ENDO2025 Saturday, we got a fresh view of the future that lies ahead for medical and surgical obesity care. In a sharp contrast to either/or constructs that pit medical and surgical care as rivals, endocrinology fellow Angela Rao presented data pointing to complementary roles for medical and surgical obesity care. Analyzing data from 846 […]

Mental health often, but not always, improves after metabolic and bariatric surgery. But new research tells us that this is not really a direct consequence of weight reduction. Instead, it seems that better mental health very likely comes from the reduction in experiences of weight stigma. In fact, Larissa McGarrity and colleagues found that the […]

Back in October, JAMA Network Open published a research letter suggesting that metabolic surgery numbers were “plunging” because of GLP-1 medicines. They claimed to observe a 26% drop in surgeries between 2022 and 2023 for privately insured patients. A few months later, the authors issued a correction and said the actual drop was more like […]

These are indeed interesting times for folks who care about the need that so many people have for obesity care. Medicines for obesity, with the advent of GLP-1 agonists, have become much better. Thus the demand for metabolic surgery has slipped a bit. Most metabolic surgeons have seen this in the volume of cases that […]

Very quietly this week, JAMA Surgery published new data on long-term outcomes that will inform choices in metabolic surgery for years to come. We’re talking about the study of 10-year outcomes from the SM-BOSS RCT of gastric sleeve versus bypass. It tells us that the easy choice in the short term (a gastric sleeve) might […]