University of Birmingham The impact of bariatric surgery on incident microvascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes

Aim: To assess the impact of bariatric surgery (BS) on incident microvascular complications [diabetes-related foot disease (DFD), sight threatening diabetic retinopathy (STDR), chronic kidney disease (CKD)] in patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity. Methods: A retrospective matched, controlled population-based cohort study of adults with type 2 diabetes between 1/1/1990 and 31/1/2018 using IQVIA Medical Research Data (IMRD), a database of primary care electronic records. Each patient with type2 diabetes who subsequently had BS (surgical) was matched on index date with up to 2 patients with type 2 diabetes did not have BS (non-surgical) within the same general practice by age, sex, pre-index body mass index and diabetes duration. Results: 1126 surgical and 2219 non-surgical participants were included. In the study population, 2261 (68%) were women; Mean (SD) age was 49.87 (9.3) vs 50.12 (9.3) years and BMI was 46.76 (7.96) kg/m 2 vs 46.14 (7.49) kg/m 2 in surgical vs non-surgical group respectively. In surgical group, 22.1%, 22.7%, 52.2% and 1.1% patients had gastric band, sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass & duodenal switch respectively. Over median (IQR) follow-up was 3.9 years (1.8-6.4), BS was associated with reduction in incident combined microvascular complications (adjusted HR 0.63, 95% CI 0.51 to 0.78, p<0.001), DFD (0.61, 0.50 to 0.75, p<0.001), STDR (0.66, 0.44 to 1.00, p<0.001), CKD (0.63, 0.51 to 0.78, p<0.001). Analysis based on the type of surgery showed that all types of surgery were associated with favourable impact on the incident of composite microvascular complications, greatest reduction RYGB. Conclusions: BS was associated with a significant reduction in incident diabetes-related microvascular complications.