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| from slantmouth.com |
Highs and lows.
Lows and highs.
How often are you on the correct side of both in the same context? In my experience, not that often. But, when you are, its a time to celebrate and take note!
Such an occurrence occurred in the Bariatric Surgery field recently, from an article published in the January 2015 JAMA entitled "Association between Bariatric surgery and Long term Survival".
The study of 2,500 VA patients not only showed that weight loss surgery prevents, resolves, or improves diseases such as obesity, type II DM, and certain kinds of cancer, but can lead to a longer life.
The study followed patients 5-14 years post surgery between 2000 and 2011. On average, the mean age was 52 years old, and the average BMI was 47. Mix of procedures was 74% Bypass, 15%Sleeve, and 10% Band; 1% 'other'.
As time passed in the study, the curve of those patients that had surgery clearly diverged from matched controls who did not have the surgery. As measured at both 5 years and 10 years into the study prospectively, the surgery patients showed significant all cause mortality reductions, even across different sub groups defined by diabetes, diagnosis, age, and sex.
All these 'highs' of resolving and / or improving comorbidites, and the 'low' of markedly reduced mortality for 10 years out from bariatric surgery in this study.
A win -win scenario for sure.
How many other surgical procedures can boast of such glowing attributes, that even get a fraction of the scrutiny of weight loss surgery?
