New York (September 12, 2008) — Nearly 1,000 of the world's leading authorities on diabetes, health care policy and finance from public and private sectors will gather in New York City next week to discuss the appropriate role of new interventional therapies for the treatment of Type 2 Diabetes. Currently, the condition is one of the fastest-growing epidemics in the world, affecting an estimated 23.6 million people in the United States in 2007 alone, and is one of the costliest conditions to treat. The 1st World Congress on Interventional Therapies for Type 2 Diabetes will convene on September 15-16, 2008.
The Congress has been endorsed by 26 of the most prestigious diabetes, medical and surgical societies in the world. Attendees and faculty represent 46 countries and six continents.
According to Dr. Jesse Roth, a congress faculty member, researcher and diabetologist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City:
"Surgery has arrived like a comet across the firmament of diabetes and obesity — unexpected, brilliant, with great promise for the future. Teams of talented researchers are moving ahead to define the role of surgery in the treatment of both of these scourges."
Monday, September 15
Session I: Diabetes: Epidemiology, Pathology and Socioeconomic Burden
(7:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.)
Dr. Paul Zimmet, professor at the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute of Monash University in Caulfield South, Australia, will present an update on the incidence and prevalence of diabetes in various countries of the world, analyzing potential implications and future trends.
The social and economic burden of type 2 diabetes will also be discussed amongst diabetes experts, including representatives from the World Health Organization and top health authorities from the United States, including Dr. Richard Daines, New York State Health Commissioner, and from abroad, Dr. José Angel Córdova Villalobos, Minister of Health of Mexico.
Session II: Conventional Diabetes Therapies: Outcomes and Limitations
(10:20 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.)
Dr. Harold Liebowitz, professor of medicine, from the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism/Diabetes at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center, will discuss the current treatments, comparing and contrasting the metabolic advantages and disadvantages of new therapies to the standard of care.
A panel discussion will follow, including surgeons and diabetologists, who will further compare and contrast the various therapies' risks, benefits and limitations.
Session III: Bariatric Surgery: Diabetic and Metabolic Outcomes
(Part 1: 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. / Part 2: 2:00 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.)
Dr. Phil Schauer, a bariatric surgeon from the Cleveland Clinic, will chair a session providing an update of the efficacy of bariatric surgery with the hope of controlling diabetes, hyperlipidemia and hypertension. Dr. Schauer will analyze the safety profiles of various operations compared with those of other commonly performed gastrointestinal (GI) surgeries.
Two large, recently published studies will be reviewed — one from United States and one from Sweden — showing that surgery can dramatically reduce mortality of severely obese patients. One such study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, by Dr. Ted Adams, adjunct associate professor and program director of the Health & Fitness Institute at LDS Hospital, at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, showed a 90 percent reduction of diabetes-specific mortality after gastric bypass surgery. Dr. Adams will present data from these studies, as well as new, unpublished data concerning the impact of surgery on the typical complications of diabetes. The authors believe that the findings have great significance, because type 2 diabetes has serious cardiovascular complications, which potentially lead to mortality, and remains very difficult to address even by intensive conventional therapy.
The data presented will be critically analyzed by the panel discussion, including leading diabetes experts as well as surgeons and cardiologists.
Session IV: Gastrointestinal Surgery to Treat Diabetes in Patients Who Are Not Severely Obese (BMI <35)
(3:05 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.)
The remarkable control of type 2 diabetes in severely obese patients raises the question of whether surgery may also be a possible therapeutic option for moderately obese or non-obese patients. Dr. Francesco Rubino, chief of Gastrointestinal Metabolic Surgery and director of the Diabetes Surgery Center, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, will present a review of published evidence, and an update consisting of data from new clinical studies from around the world investigating the efficacy and safety of surgery for diabetes in overweight or non-obese patients.
The panel discussion, including surgeons, endocrinologists and policy makers, will focus on the appropriate role of surgery in less-obese patients, who do not qualify for bariatric surgery under current measures and standards, and what parameters other than just BMI should be used to determine the need for surgical intervention.
Session V: Gastrointestinal Surgery and Diabetes in Adolescents
(4:45 - 6:00 p.m.)
Dr. Francine Kaufman, one of the world's foremost childhood-diabetes-researchers, head of the Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Children's Hospital, and professor of pediatrics and communications, at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, will present data regarding the growing rate of obesity and diabetes epidemic in adolescents. Results examining the efficacy, safety and psychological implications of surgery in this population will be presented and discussed with leading international pediatrician and diabetes experts.
Tuesday, September 16
Session VI: Mechanisms of Surgical Control of Diabetes
(7:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m.)
Dr. David Cummings, deputy director of the Diabetes Endocrinology Research Unit and associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, will discuss the various mechanisms of diabetes control after GI surgery, including evidence demonstrating diabetic improvement as a result of mechanisms independent of weight-loss and lowered caloric intake. Recent research and ongoing studies will be presented showing important implications of this new information. Dr. Cummings will discuss how this new information improves upon the understanding of diabetes and the significance of surgical intervention for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
A panel of diabetologists and surgeons will attempt to prioritize future research directions in order to gain a greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms and the effects of GI surgery, independent of weight-loss.
Dr. Jesse Roth will explain the mechanisms of surgical control of diabetes and how such procedures might lead to the identification of new drug targets for pharmaceutical research and development with the hope of potentially mimicking the effects of surgery.
Session VII: Weighing Research Priorities in an Era of Constraint
(9:45 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.)
Drs. Cummings and Roth will present data suggesting that the remarkable anti-diabetic impact of certain GI operations — specifically gastric bypass — cannot be attributed solely to reduced food intake and body weight.
A panel of diabetologists and surgeons will attempt to prioritize future research directions in order to gain a greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms and the effects of GI surgery independent of weight.
Session VIII: Novel Gastrointestinal Interventional Therapies
(11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.)
Speakers and panelists will discuss how a better understanding of GI surgery for diabetes, and recent technological developments, are creating the foundation for novel and revolutionary, minimally invasive interventional therapies that may have the same effects of surgery. New endoscopic and endoluminal therapies for diabetes, as well as gastric and intestinal stimulator devices, will be presented, including early clinical trials from the United States, South America and Europe.
New data from a pilot clinical trial will be presented showing that an endoluminal gastrointestinal device may prevent nutrients from contacting the upper part of the small bowel, achieving immediate and sustained improvement of diabetes - independent of weight loss - suggesting a direct action on the mechanisms of disease.
Findings will be presented by Dr. Lee Kaplan, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the director of the Weight Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Session IX: Clinical and Research Recommendations for Diabetes Surgery: The Rome Consensus Conference
(1:15 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.)
Outcomes of the First International Consensus Conference (the Rome Diabetes Surgery Summit), which examined the use of surgical intervention for diabetes, will be publicly presented for the first time. This session is held under the auspices of the International Diabetes Surgery Task Force, a group of leading scholars from around the world, including some of the most respected diabetes experts, clinical trials specialists, surgeons and scientists. The Task Force has been created to promote the recommendations established by the voting experts of the Rome Summit worldwide.
The Diabetes Surgery Summit guidelines, which include recommendations for the surgical treatment of diabetes, as well as for future research in this field, will be critically discussed by officially designated experts representing leading scientific societies in the field of endocrinology and surgery, including the AACE, ASMBS, TOS, Diabetes UK, WHO, ADA and IFSO.
X: The Economics of Interventional Therapies and Implications for Public Health (3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.)
During a specially highlighted portion of the Congress, faculty, including health economists and top health authorities from United States and around the world, will discuss economic and social implications of surgical treatment of diabetes. New data from major medical and economic journals will be presented showing that diabetes surgery can benefit individual patients and actually represent a potential cost-savings.
Social implications and insurance coverage will be among the topics of a lively debate between a panel, including the undersecretary of health of England, the director of the British National Health Service, chief executives of patients' advocacy groups, scientific societies, managed care organizations, and U.S. public and private insurance plans.
Session XI: Comprehensive Management of Patients with Diabetes: The Role of Interventional Therapies
(4:30 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.)
Dr. Robin Goland, associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia in New York, City, and Dr. Louis Aronne, obesity-diabetes expert from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and clinical professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, will have a practical discussion on the role of surgery in the comprehensive management of patients with diabetes. The presentation will touch upon and utilize data and discussions from the previous sessions in an attempt to define acceptable applications of surgery and interventional treatments based on current evidence. There will be a dialogue between patients, who have diabetes, or who have undergone interventional therapies, and their health care providers, including endocrinologists, diabetes educators and surgeons.
The 1st World Congress on Interventional Therapies for Type 2 Diabetes
The 1st World Congress on Interventional Therapies for Type 2 Diabetes is a comprehensive and multidisciplinary forum where leaders in the global health community will conduct an organized review and discussion of the latest scientific data and theories on the use of bariatric surgery for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The Congress, hosted by Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, aims to create a forum for the medical community to work with health policy makers, including top public health authorities and insurers from the U.S. and around the world. The overarching aim is to craft an agenda of health policy initiatives to seize the opportunity offered by gastrointestinal surgery and novel interventional therapies for the understanding and treatment of diabetes. For more information, visit www.interventionaldiabetology.org.
SPONSORS OF THE WORLD CONGRESS
Led by Visionary Sponsor Covidien, the Congress has received support from the medical device, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. Sponsors include: Covidien, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 3 Peaks Consulting, Allergan, GI Dynamics, GlaxoSmithKline, Metacure, Olympus, On-Q Pain Relief System, Power Medical Interventions, Amylin, Lifescan, Obesity Care News Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Karl Storz Endoscopy, and Synovis.