Tirzepatide: real-world survey 2026

A survey study published in Obesity Pillars in July 2026 asked 151 prescribing physicians and 199 people with obesity or overweight what they actually experienced on once-weekly tirzepatide. The headline: more than 90% of patients who responded said they would recommend the drug to someone in a similar situation, and 78.5% of physicians rated their obesity patients' outcomes as a treatment success^[1].

The study, by Gibble, Leith, Harrison, and colleagues at Eli Lilly^[1], drew on two rounds of surveys: October 2023 to April 2024 and October 2024 to January 2025. All 199 patients had obesity or overweight without type-2 diabetes, and 84.4% had at least one obesity-related complication such as hypertension or dyslipidaemia.

What physicians said about prescribing

When physicians were asked why they chose tirzepatide over other options, three reasons dominated: long-term safety profile, once-weekly dosing convenience, and appetite reduction^[1]. The once-weekly schedule matters in practice: the approved doses in the SURMOUNT programme range from 2.5 mg at initiation up to 15 mg at maintenance, all administered as a single subcutaneous injection, and the slow titration schedule is largely what keeps gastrointestinal side effects manageable^[2].

The 78.5% physician success rate is a survey figure, not a controlled outcome, and it sits against a more cautious backdrop from the trial record. In SURMOUNT-1, 4.3% to 7.1% of tirzepatide participants discontinued because of adverse events, predominantly gastrointestinal, versus 2.6% on placebo. That gap does not disappear in real-world use, and physicians working outside the trial's intensive monitoring context will encounter it.

What patients reported

Over 90% of the 48 patients who answered the recommendation question said they would recommend tirzepatide to someone in a similar position^[1]. The 48-respondent figure is the subset who answered that specific item; the full patient cohort was 199. The study does not report the recommendation rate among the other 151, which limits how far that 90%-plus figure can be generalised.

Patient-reported outcomes in real-world surveys consistently skew toward the satisfied: people who had a poor experience or discontinued often do not appear in physician chart reviews or follow-up survey pools. The 90%-plus recommendation rate is a signal, not a definitive measure of population-level satisfaction.

The durability question the survey does not answer

The survey was conducted at two points in calendar 2023 to 2025, not across a long follow-up window. What happens when patients stay on tirzepatide for years, or when they stop, is a separate body of evidence. SURMOUNT-4 (Aronne et al., JAMA 2024) randomised participants after 36 weeks of open-label tirzepatide to continue or switch to placebo^[3]. Those who switched to placebo regained 14.0% of body weight on average over the next 52 weeks; those who continued on tirzepatide lost a further 5.5%. The practical implication is that patient satisfaction at one or two survey timepoints does not tell you whether they will still be on the drug at year three or what their weight trajectory looks like if they stop.

Where real-world evidence fits alongside the trial record

Controlled trials answer efficacy questions; surveys answer experience questions. The Gibble et al. study fills a gap the SURMOUNT programme was not designed to fill: how patients and physicians feel about tirzepatide in ordinary clinical settings, with all the comorbidities, polypharmacy, and access issues that trial populations tend to exclude. For the trial numbers, see the tirzepatide overview page and the detailed breakdown of SURMOUNT-1 through SURMOUNT-5 linked from the sources below.

For country-specific access and prescribing rules, the tirzepatide regulation section covers NHS criteria under NICE TA924 and TA1026, EU Mounjaro authorisation status, and the US Mounjaro and Zepbound labelling. Real-world satisfaction data like this is useful context, but access and coverage decisions run through the regulatory layer, not through patient survey scores.

What we do not yet know

The study is a cross-sectional survey, not a longitudinal cohort. It captures physician and patient views at a point in time, not treatment durability, weight-regain rates after discontinuation, or longer-horizon adverse events. Participants were all from a single country (the paper does not specify, though the Eli Lilly authorship and the survey period align with the US market launch), and the physician sample (151) is large enough for directional signals but not for subgroup analysis.

The study also covers only patients without type-2 diabetes. Tirzepatide is prescribed for both obesity and type-2 diabetes (as Mounjaro for diabetes; as Zepbound in the US for weight management)^[2], and physician and patient experience may differ across these populations. A satisfaction dataset in the diabetes population, where glycaemic outcomes provide a harder endpoint alongside subjective experience, would give a more complete picture. Independent real-world cohort studies with hard endpoints remain the needed next step.