[Scope and limitations of the surgical treatment of diabetes]

A brief account is given of the current knowledge, experiments, and clinical findings concerning the surgical management of diabetes. The aim of all treatments, from conventional pancreas transplant to the sophisticated transplantation of islets and foetal pancreas, and a subject with its own special features, namely intestinal by-pass, is to relieve the patient from insulin management, which, while it increases his survival, does not defend him from possibly fatal vascular complications. Though far from providing a final solution, each of the topics dealt with provides an example of the way research and clinical practice continue to offer reasons for the experimentation of new therapeutic techniques.