However, this surgery has also been found to come with an increased risk of bone fractures and infections as a new international study reports. According to some doctors, gastric bypass could be able to cure diabetes completely even though this was not the case in most of the patients. The co-author of the study, Dr. Charles J. Bilington noted that something else that was unexpected was the kind of complications that the bypass patients had.

Worrisome negatives of gastric bypass

The researchers noted that in recent times, gastric bypass has been having more worrisome negatives and less strong positives than it had been thought previously. These results are essentially based on the reports of the two years in which the Diabetes Surgery Study has been going on. Researchers recruited 120 people who were obese from 2008 to 2011 and the age of these patients was between 30 and 67 years and all had type 2 diabetes.This took place at three U.S teaching hospitals and one hospital in Taiwan. The patients were divided randomly into tow groups, i.e. medical diabetes and lifestyle management or lifestyle & medical management besides gastric bypass surgery.

During the time of the study, there were regular meetings between the lifestyle group with a nurse or a dietician where they were given instructions to take their weight and their daily food intake was recorded while their daily exercise was revamped to hit 325 minutes for activity per week such as walking. Also, the group met an endocrinologist whereby medicines were taken for cholesterol, blood sugar control as well as blood pressure. The same resources were accessed by the group of gastric bypass as well but weight loss surgery was also included as well.

The findings of the study

Two years after going through surgical operation, 24 of patients in the group of gastric bypass had lower HbA1c and lower blood pressure and low density lipoprotein cholesterol. These together indicated an improvement in the control of diabetes. The gastric group essentially had eight infections in comparison to the four that were in the group of comparison. The bypass group was noted to having seven falls that were very serious and had fractures like three serious falls as well as one fracture in comparison group. Worth noting is the fact that it is only women who had the fractures.

Gastric bypass group was found to have nutritional deficiencies of calcium, iron as well as Vitamin D. in general practice, it is known that there is a high likelihood of nutritional deficiencies being a much greater problem. Bone strength could be reduced by gastric bypass due to a reduction in the absorption of calcium from food. There is need for the supplements to be adjusted accordingly as a way of ensuring they are enough.