Trotting Out STAMPEDE



sharma-obesity-blood-sugar-testing2In the obesity world, this week’s big news is the publication of the three year results of the STAMPEDE trial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

As a regular reader, you may recall my previous post on this randomised controlled trial of bariatric surgery for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

STAMPEDE involved the randomisation of 150 obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes to either intensive medical therapy alone or intensive medical therapy plus Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy.

Rather than weight loss, the primary end point of STAMPEDE was a glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) level of 6.0% or less (from a mean baseline of 9.3%).

For the 91% of the patients who completed 36 months of follow-up at three years, 5% of the patients in the medical-therapy group achieved an HbA1c of 6.0% compared to 38% of those in the gastric-bypass group and 24% of those in the sleeve-gastrectomy group.

In addition, surgically treated subjects overall had far lesser need for glucose-lowering medications, including insulin than those receiving medical treatment.

Weight was reduced by 20-25% in the surgical groups compared to a 4% weight loss in the medical arm of the study.

Quality-of-life was also significantly better in the two surgical groups than in the medical-therapy group.

There were no major late surgical complications.

By any reasonable standard, there cannot be any remaining doubt in anyone’s mind that surgical treatment for type 2 diabetes is vastly superior to anything that medical treatment has to offer.

Diabetologists and, in fact, all physicians, diabetes educators, dietitians and other health professionals, who fail to inform and counsel their type 2 patients with regard to surgical treatment options for their condition, risk being accused of malpractice.

Whether patients want surgery for diabetes or not is ultimately their choice – being informed of the potential benefits of surgery should not be a matter of choice – it should be good clinical practice.

@DrSharma
Edmonton, AB

Disclaimer: I am NOT a surgeon!

ResearchBlogging.orgSchauer PR, Bhatt DL, Kirwan JP, Wolski K, Brethauer SA, Navaneethan SD, Aminian A, Pothier CE, Kim ES, Nissen SE, Kashyap SR, & the STAMPEDE Investigators (2014). Bariatric Surgery versus Intensive Medical Therapy for Diabetes – 3-Year Outcomes. The New England journal of medicine PMID: 24679060

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