Dr. Francesco Rubino took the stage again on the second day of the XXI Bariatric Surgery Congress to discuss the role of the Diabetic Surgery Summit in helping shape and establish the evolving protocols to make metabolic surgery safer and the standard care for patients that need it.
Rubino recalled that the road to create the protocols to approach T2D as an operable disease started after rationalizing and extrapolating to humans by the scientific methods and support of peers the results of the experiments with rodents that showed that bariatric surgery could not only reduce weight, but also glucose metabolism, published in 2004.
That development of knowledge, led by the joint forces of various specialists in the DSS, expanded the scope of bariatric surgery enough to create a new branch that today we call metabolic surgery, with a recognition of the guidelines and standards just in 2016.
That slow pace of growth, partially stumped by misinformation and prejudice among health physicians that are in close contact with patients that suffer from diabetes and obesity, are preventing this technique from reaching the ones that need it.