Weight Loss Surgery – Our Program

East Carolina University is an internationally recognized leader in the field of bariatric surgery. The current version of the gastric bypass operation, used throughout the world, was designed and tested at ECU in 1980. Not much later, the university’s surgeons were also the first to document that the operation could reverse type 2 diabetes, prevent the complications of that disease and reduce mortality by 83%. All of these discoveries have been widely verified.

ECU was also the leader in assuring the safety of the operations. To protect these patients, of which many are burdened by the complications of obesity, ECU led in the development of Centers of Excellence as well as the design of BOLD, a software for the international registry of the operations done in the US and 22 countries. In these carefully controlled settings of these centers, the surgery, even in these complex patients is now safer than routine gall bladder operations. There are now over 750 such centers in the US. A reflection of that leadership is that three members of our faculty have served as presidents of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the largest professional society for this specialty in the world.

Currently, the surgeons together with basic scientists at the university are pursuing the mechanisms by which the surgery reverses not only diabetes but also high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, sleep apnea, non-alcoholic liver disease, infertility and a number of other complications of obesity. This work, supported by the National Institutes of Health, may, hopefully, lead to a medicine that could address these diseases without surgery.

Most important, ECU continues to be a Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence that is devoted to personal, safe care not only before and during surgery but also to support of our patients and their families for years to come.