Brain surgery is hard. In fact, it takes four years of undergraduate
training, four years of medical school and six years of residency just
to be licensed to perform brain procedures.
So when a team of neurosurgeons at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital
released a study last week outlining a new treatment for Type 2
Diabetes involving brain surgery, medical professionals knew it wasn’t
to be taken lightly. The team believes that, by relieving arterial
pressure on the medula oblongata, they can improve glucose control and
reduce the impacts of Type 2 Diabetes. The team, led by AGH neurosurgery
vice-chair Dr. Peter Jannetta, conducted an earlier study on 15
patients being treated for an unrelated right-sided
cranial nerve disease. These patients all had Type 2 Diabetes and
showed arterial compression in the medula. This follow-up study removed
the pressure on the medula for 10 diabetes patients and monitored their
results over 12 months. The patients did not change their diet, their
weight or their activity level. By the end of 12 months, 7 out of 10
patients showed signs of improvement.
“We are getting less
convinced that diabetes is a sugar problem at all,” Jannetta says. “That
may be a side effect of the real problem that appears to be something
neurogenic. There have been wonderful studies over the last few years
that show that controlling sugar and cholesterol and blood pressure in
Type 2 diabetics make it worse than if you just let them go. We have
been barking up the wrong tree.”
As the 70 percent success rate
would indicate, this treatment is far from a panacea. But like many
scientists, Jannetta views these failures as opportunities for further
research. The three patients who failed to show improvement all happened
to be the most obese patients in the group. As patients grow more and
more obese, the arteries grow longer and cause more and more pressure on
those parts of the brain that cause deterioration. As long as only the
larger arteries are creating pressure, this surgery can help. Now that
they are barking up the right tree, Janetta believes the future looks
much brighter for the treatment of this epidemic disease. If this is indeed the case, then we might very soon be hearing about new developments in neurosurgery in the treatment of diabetes from these experts or from journals such as those published by dr timothy steel.
“This new
perspective opens up new operations, better therapy, new medications,”
says Jannetta. “It’s really intriguing and exciting.”
Source: Dr. Peter Jannetta, Allegheny General Hospital
Writer: John Steele