Diabetics Improve as Much as Others After Bypass

A study of patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has found that insulin-requiring diabetics improve just as much as their nondiabetic counterparts afterward. The study was reported at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons in San Francisco, CA (USA).

The study involved 292 patients, of whom 39 were diabetics who needed to take insulin daily, 63 were diabetics who disease could be controlled by diet or drugs, and the remaining 190 were patients with no evidence of diabetes. Their functional status was assessed on the basis of answers to questions about their activity level and was compared with baseline scores obtained before surgery. After surgery, functional scores increased to the same degree across all patient groups: from 30.2 to 36.8 among nondiabetics, from 28.5 to 34.1 among noninsulin-requiring diabetics, and from 19.7 to 25.3 among insulin-requiring diabetics.

"The operation has the same effect on insulin-requiring diabetics as it does on nondiabetics. Insulin-requiring diabetics on the whole have lower functional capability because of their diabetes. Bypass surgery will not take insulin-requiring diabetics who are functioning at a lower level and elevate them to the level of a nondiabetics,” explained Christian T. Campos, M.D., associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Worcester, USA), who led the study.



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University of Massachusetts Medical School