In the 21 years since the first discovery of the benefits of bariatrics surgery to the control of diabetes, bigger and bigger strides have been taken to perfect the weapons that could be used to fight this illness. Spreading awareness of the surgical ways to control diabetes is a great task that the ASMBS is determined to tackle head on.
With 86 million people currently diagnosed with this disease in the U.S, the president of the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, Dr. Matt Hutter, explained the ways that the campaign “Escape Diabetes” has been acting firmely to inform patients of the benefits and safety parameters of this medical path and finally answer a question: why, in a country with such high number of diabetics, a life changing operation is performed in less than 1% of the ones that need it.
By making the information about the type of procedures, its benefits, risks and consequences clear for the patients that are viable candidates, the ASMBS wants to educate the patients and push for a more open and unprejudiced discussion around the use of metabolic surgery against diabetes.
This debate and new strategies to disseminate the knowledge about the weapons against the rapid rise of diabetes is fits the objective of this years congress, as put by SBCBM president Marcos Leão Vilas Boas. “Our main goal is to get our attendees up to speed in the latest scientific updates in the care for obese patients”.