Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus is a prevalent chronic disease with several macrovascular and microvascular complications. Cardiovascular diseases including coronary artery disease and stroke are common macrovascular complication that reduces the quality of life and lead to early mortality. Additionally, they pose enormous socioeconomic burden on the societies and the governments. Therefore, any intervention that reduces the cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes will have positive impact of the patients and the society. Thus, this systematic review aimed to evaluate the cardiovascular events after metabolic surgery in comparison with the new classes of glucose lowering agents in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
The review included 11 randomized controlled trials to both GLP-1 RA and SGLT-2 i groups. It also included 7 metabolic surgery studies, 2 of these are randomized controlled trials and the other 5 are observational studies. These studies were the most relevant studies to the research question. The results revealed different baseline demographic and clinical characteristics between the medication trials and metabolic surgery studies. Moreover, it revealed significant reduction in cardiovascular events in metabolic surgery studies when compared to medication trials. It also showed significant HbA1c and weight reduction in the metabolic surgery group. The remission of diabetes was very high in the metabolic surgery group while none of medication trials accomplished diabetes recovery. However, both medication and surgery groups had adverse events.
In conclusion, the review is consistent with previous literature. It suggests that metabolic surgery is more effective than medical therapy in reducing cardiovascular events. Although this conclusion should be interpreted with caution due to the differences in baseline characteristics between studies. In general, the review recommends younger adult diabetic patients with obesity and history of established cardiovascular diseases to undergo metabolic surgery. Whereas, older patients with history of cardiovascular disease should be advised to take one of the medications that has been proved to reduce cardiovascular events. Future studies that compare metabolic surgery and the new classes of the glucose lowering agents is recommended to confirm the findings in this review.
Emergence and Progression of Albuminuria in a Cohort of Egyptian Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: a 5-year Prospective Study