• Posted September 19, 2025

Weight-Loss Surgery Outperforms GLP-1 Drugs, Study Argues

Cutting-edge drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound are all the rage for dropping excess pounds, but weight-loss surgery might have a better impact on people’s health, a new study says.

People who had weight-loss surgery lost more weight, lived longer and faced fewer serious health problems compared to those prescribed GLP-1 drugs, researchers reported Sept. 16 in the journal Nature Medicine.

“Even with today’s best medicines, metabolic surgery offers unique and lasting benefits for people with obesity and diabetes,” senior researcher Dr. Ali Aminian, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric & Metabolic Institute, said in a news release.

“The benefits we observed went beyond weight loss,” he said. “Surgery was linked to fewer heart problems, less kidney disease and even lower rates of diabetes-related eye damage.”

For the study, researchers tracked nearly 4,000 people with diabetes and obesity treated at the Cleveland Clinic between 2010 and 2017.

Participants included more than 1,600 who underwent bariatric procedures like gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy, and nearly 2,300 treated with GLP-1 drugs.

After around six years of follow-up, people who got weight-loss surgery had a:

• 32% lower risk of death.

• 35% lower risk of major heart problems.

• 47% lower risk of serious kidney disease.

• 54% lower risk of diabetes-related vision loss.

Surgery patients also lost more weight — nearly 22% over 10 years, compared with just under 7% for GLP-1 patients, the study showed.

Further, surgery patients achieved better blood sugar control and required fewer prescriptions for diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol, researchers found.

“Our findings indicate that surgery should remain an important treatment option for obesity and diabetes,” Aminian said. “These long-term benefits are harder to achieve with GLP-1 medicines alone, as many patients stop using the medications over time.”

Senior researcher Dr. Steven Nissen agreed.

“Even in the era of these powerful new drugs to treat obesity and diabetes, metabolic surgery may provide additional benefits, including a survival advantage,” Nissen, chief academic officer of the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic, said in a news release.

However, researchers noted that the study could not draw a cause-and-effect link between surgery and better outcomes, as it was observational. Future clinical trials could add to the evidence by directly comparing surgery with GLP-1 drugs.

More information

The Mayo Clinic has more on weight-loss surgery.

SOURCE: Cleveland Clinic, news release, Sept. 15, 2025