Bariatric surgery leads to significantly greater weight reduction and resolution of diabetes and metabolic syndrome as compared with nonsurgical approaches to obesity, a meta-analysis of randomized trials showed.

On average, patients lost an additional 57 lbs when bariatric botanical slimming surgery was put into conventional nonsurgical approaches to weight reduction. Patients who had surgery were greater than five times as prone to have remission of diabetes and two times as likely to have remission of metabolic syndrome, as compared with patients who were treated just with nonsurgical interventions.

The outcomes add to proof of bariatric surgery's efficacy from meizitang botanical observational studies, but more long-term follow-up data are needed, Viktoria L. Gloy, PhD, of the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, and colleagues reported online in BMJ.

"This meta-analysis provides comprehensive evidence that, compared with nonsurgical treatment of obesity, wls results in greater body weight loss and better remission rates of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome," the authors concluded.