The new Scandinavian Obesity Surgery Registry (SOReg) report may influence current guidelines. Patients without type 2 diabetes (T2DM) prior to bariatric surgery had lower mortality over 6.3 years compared to those with T2DM. Moreover, patients with T2DM who achieved remission within 1 year after surgery had lower mortality than those who did not remit. Finally, there was no threshold at 10 years, but rather a linear relationship between duration of T2DM and glycemic remission. The SOReg report challenges existing recommendations and clinical practice. A case may also be made for patients with T2DM who did not achieve glycemic remission after 1 year to have a combination approach of surgery with medicines rather than surgery alone. Ultimately, the impact of T2DM duration on glycemic remission again suggest that patients with T2DM should have bariatric surgery earlier.
Keywords: Bariatric surgery; Metabolic surgery; Type 2 diabetes.