Even higher use seen in patients without type 2 diabetes
THURSDAY, Oct. 9, 2025 (HealthDay News) — The use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) before surgery rose 16-fold among patients undergoing metabolic and bariatric surgery from 2020 to 2024, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons, held from Oct. 4 to 7 in Chicago.
Stefanie C. Rohde, M.D., from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, and colleagues examined population-level use of GLP-1 RAs before metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS). The analysis included 373,308 unique patients who underwent primary MBS between 2020 and 2024.
The researchers found that from quarter 1 2020 to quarter 4 2024, the proportion of patients with at least one preoperative GLP-1 RA prescription increased from 5.6 to 26.9 percent. Among patients without type 2 diabetes, preoperative GLP-1 RA prescriptions rose 12-fold (from 1.6 to 19.5 percent) compared with threefold among patients with type 2 diabetes (from 14.7 to 44.5 percent). Increases in semaglutide and tirzepatide prescriptions primarily drove these trends.
“While patients previously believed they had to choose between GLP-1 receptor agonists and surgery, we”re now seeing that people are using both,” Rohde said in a statement.
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