An Indian surgeon specialised in obesity and diabetes has been approved by the UAE Ministry of Health to conduct keyhole excess fat removal surgery.
Dr R Padmakumar, Senior Consultant Surgeon and Medical Director of Sunrise Group of Hospitals, said that already 100 patients have undergone keyhole surgery for diabetes and the success rate is 92 per cent.
“Excess fat in the body is like poison that affects the functioning of other body parts, including the pancreas. By removing excess fat from the stomach through keyhole surgeries, patients with Type 2 diabetes can become normal, within one day of the surgery.”
“The International Diabetic Federation (IDF) has also now recognised keyhole excess fat removal as a cure for diabetics. The keyhole surgery on a diabetic with any body mass (obese or normal) will cost between Dh50,000 to Dh70,000 in the UAE and Rs300,000- 350,000 in India,” he said.
“We have successfully conducted such procedure on about 100 patients, including many NRIs from the UAE and other Gulf countries. Many of these patients are happy and their life expectancy has been extended. We don’t advise the surgery on patients undergoing dialysis or those who have undergone angioplasty or other heart surgeries, because they cannot bear such an operation.”
Dr Padmakumar said patients taking regular medication or insulin spend between Dh3,000-4,000 per month. Thus spending money for a keyhole surgery is worth it. He said insurance companies have not yet approved keyhole surgery for treatment for those suffering from diabetes, but since the Ministry of Health in the UAE has approved it, he will persuade insurance companies to follow suit.
“Diabetic surgery is an appropriate treatment for people with Type 2 diabetes who do not achieve recommended targets with medical therapies, especially when there are other major co-morbidities. These procedures are not useful for Type 1 diabetic patients.”
“We are going to do this surgery in the International Modern Hospital, Dubai. This is the first time in the GCC that a surgeon has been allowed to perform keyhole surgery as a cure for diabetics. Twenty per cent of the population in the UAE suffers from diabetics and they spend several million dirhams to find a cure for the disease, but due to the side effects of the medicines, patients suffer other complications like depression. Citing examples of diabetic drugs removed from the market, he said the keyhole surgery is not directly impacting the pancreas glands, but instead, the surgeon removes excess fat from a portion of the patients stomach, secreting bad hormones. In the surgery, the small intensive which discrete good hormones is repositioned. We are not doing anything directly on the pancreas gland,” he revealed.
The global prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is growing. According to the International Diabetic Federation, there are 825 million diabetic patients worldwide and it poised to grow to 438 million by 2030 – affecting 8 per cent of global population and another half a billion people, 9 per cent of world population, are at risk of diabetes. The UAE has 20 per cent population suffering from diabetes, second largest in the world. India too tops the list with number one position.
Dr Sunil Roy, a Dubai-based cardiologist working for the Belhoul Speciality Hospital, says most of the members of the All Kerala Medical Graduates Association have positive opinion about the keyhole surgery treatment for diabetics. “Traditionally, keyhole surgery has been used for weight reduction and obesity patients. Now it has been proved that surgery for weight reduction will be useful in controlling diabetes. This technique has been found useful in many cases. The only problem is that the general public and patients are not aware of the key hole surgery treatment for diabetics.”
Diabetics have higher risk of death from cancer
Doctors know that diabetics have a higher than normal risk of dying of heart attacks or strokes, but new research shows that having diabetes also ups the risk of dying from many cancers and other diseases.
The findings shed light on the potential burden of disease that will build in the future as the number of cases of diabetes is predicted to rise dramatically in coming decades.
“These findings highlight even the need to prevent diabetes and to understand it better,” said Emanuele Di Angelantonio of Britain’s Cambridge University, who worked on the study as part of an international collaboration.
“The study shows that diabetes is not only a cardiovascular risk factor, but is linked to other conditions as well.”
The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), collated and analyzed data from 97 previous studies involving more than 820,000 people worldwide.
It found that being a diabetic hiked the odds of dying from cancer by 25 percent, and also heightened the risk of death from infection, kidney and liver disease.
The risk of death was only higher in people with poorly controlled diabetes, however, as indicated by high blood sugar levels after a fast.
Among the biggest cancer risks for diabetics were liver and pancreatic cancer, colorectal or bowel cancer, and lung cancer.
Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels with an estimated 280 million people, or 6.4 percent of the world’s population, suffering from it and numbers predicted to rise further as obesity rates also increase.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says up to a third of US adults could have diabetes by 2050 they continue to gain weight and shun exercise.
Another study published this week found that millions of people with diabetes are undiagnosed or poorly treated, raising their risk of early death from heart disease and of serious complications like blindness and chronic kidney disease.
The Cambridge-led study found that aside from cancer and vascular diseases such as stroke, diabetes was also associated with deaths from many other causes including renal disease, liver disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mental disorders, pneumonia, other infectious diseases.
“A 50-year-old with diabetes died, on average, six years earlier than a counterpart without diabetes,” said Cambridge University’s John Danesh, who also worked on the study.
The study did not look at why these death rates were higher among diabetics, so the researchers could not say whether diabetes link was simply a proxy for generally poorer health.
“Preventing diabetes becomes that much easier when we have a complete picture of the debilitating effect it has across the body and we know what steps to take to mitigate the damage,” said Stephen Holgate of Britain’s Medical Research Council, which part-funded the study.