Gastric Bypass and Pancreatic Health

There’s some exciting new research about the gastric bypass procedure. Gastric bypass seems to be able to stop damage to the pancreas, reversing the cause of diabetes in many patients, as well as alleviating the symptoms, Cleveland Clinic researchers recently reported in the journal Diabetes Care.

Gastric Bypass has been performed for more than 30 years with a continuous evolution of technical changes to make it more effective and safe. It uses a combination of restriction and malabsorption. During the procedure, the surgeon creates a smaller stomach pouch and attaches a section of the small intestine directly to the pouch. This allows food to bypass a large portion of the small intestine, which absorbs calories and nutrients. Having the smaller stomach pouch enables patients to feel fuller sooner and eat less food, and bypassing a portion of the small intestine means the patient’s body absorbs fewer calories.

In addition to inducing significant weight loss, over the years bariatric surgeons have noticed that the procedure is extremely effective in reversing diabetes, with patients often seeing improvement just days after surgery. Prompted by this observation, several noteworthy studies have shown that weight loss surgery is an effective diabetes treatment in obese patients. Now, new research from the Cleveland Clinic has provided insight into how gastric bypass surgery works to reverse diabetes. The researchers reported that gastric bypass seems to uniquely restore pancreatic beta-cell function, presumably by targeting belly fat and modifying the hormones in the gastrointestinal tract. The procedure remarkably targets belly fat where hormones that are toxic to the body develop,” said the lead researcher, Dr. Sangeeta Kashyap. In layman terms, gastric bypass changes hormones in the gut, which triggers the pancreas to start making insulin again. These findings provide substantial support for the use of gastric bypass surgery to treat diabetes in moderately obese patients.

Gastric bypass surgery patients average a 60-80 percent loss of excess body weight. You can learn more about the procedure, as well as the other weight loss options offered at Surgical Specialists of Louisiana and Surgical Specialists of Mississippi, by attending one of our free informational seminars.