Diabetes 'cure' holds up 6 years after bariatric surgery
AT THE ASA ANNUAL MEETING
He added that in his view, Dr. Brethauer and his colleagues set the bar too high in requiring a sustained HbA1c below 6% as the definition of disease cure when the American Diabetes Association uses a figure of 7%. He noted that if the investigators had accepted the ADA metric, their combined cure/partial remission rate would have been considerably greater than the 50% figure they reported.
Dr. Brethauer replied that he and his coinvestigators chose a cutoff of 6% in order to make a point.
"When we raise this issue of ‘cure,’ which is still quite controversial and somewhat provocative, particularly with our endocrinology colleagues, I think we have to find the strictest and most conservative criteria that we can," he explained. "We continue to provide data in support of the concept that this is a surgically treated disease. It’s a major paradigm shift for our endocrinology colleagues to accept. I think it’s going to take a generation of endocrinologists before it’s embraced."
He reported that he serves as a consultant to Ethicon Endosurgery and Apollo Endosurgery.
