OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of bariatric surgery (BS) on incident microvascular complications of diabetes-related foot disease (DFD), sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy (STDR), and chronic kidney disease (CKD) in patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A retrospective matched, controlled population-based cohort study of adults with type 2 diabetes between 1 January 1990 and 31 January 2018 using IQVIA Medical Research Data (IMRD), a database of primary care electronic records. Each patient with type 2 diabetes who subsequently had BS (surgical group) was matched on the index date with up to two patients with type 2 diabetes did not have BS (nonsurgical group) within the same general practice by age, sex, preindex BMI, and diabetes duration.

RESULTS Included were 1,126 surgical and 2,219 nonsurgical participants. In the study population 2,261 (68%) were women. Mean (SD) age was 49.87 (9.3) years vs. 50.12 (9.3) years and BMI was 46.76 (7.96) kg/m² vs. 46.14 (7.49) kg/m² in the surgical versus nonsurgical group, respectively. In the surgical group, 22.1%, 22.7%, 52.2%, and 1.1% patients had gastric band, sleeve gastrectomy, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), and duodenal switch, respectively. Over a median follow-up of 3.9 years (interquartile range 1.8–6.4), BS was associated with reduction in incident combined microvascular complications (adjusted hazard ratio 0.53, 95% CI 0.43–0.66, P < 0.001), DFD (0.61, 0.50–0.75, P < 0.001), STDR (0.66, 0.44–1.00, P = 0.048), and CKD (0.63, 0.51–0.78, P < 0.001). Analysis based on the type of surgery showed that all types of surgery were associated with a favorable impact on the incident of composite microvascular complications, with the greatest reduction for RYGB.

CONCLUSIONS BS was associated with a significant reduction in incident diabetes-related microvascular complications.