Research

Hormonal

Long-term remission of Type 2 Diabetes following metabolic surgery is not sustained for the majority of patients, with remission rates dropping significantly after 5 years.

While surgery often puts Type 2 Diabetes into remission initially, this effect often wears off after several years. Most patients will eventually need to restart diabetes medications to maintain blood sugar control, meaning surgery is a tool for disease management rather than a permanent cure.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
With regards to long-term remission of T2DM, the metabolic benefits of bariatric surgery appear to fatigue with time and a proportion of patients will not maintain normoglycaemia without pharmacotherapy... 5-year follow-up data... suggested 50% of the surgically treated patients and none of the medically treated patients were in remission; however, using the stricter ADA definition, in fact, none of the patients in either group met the criteria for remission.
Alexis Sudlow et al. · Therapeutic Advances in Endocrinology and Metabolism · 2019

Why this rating

Supported by long-term RCTs (STAMPEDE, 5-year follow-up) and prospective cohort studies.

Source

Review of multimodal treatment for type 2 diabetes: combining metabolic surgery and pharmacotherapy

Alexis Sudlow et al. · Therapeutic Advances in Endocrinology and Metabolism · 2019

DOI 10.1177/2042018819875407

narrative_reviewCited 30×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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