Assessment of morbidity in gynaecologic oncology laparoscopy and identification of possible risk factors

The aim of this study was to ascertain the incidence of and the risk factors associated with morbidity in laparoscopy performed on patients with cervical cancer and endometrial cancer.

This was an observational study of a cohort of 128 women, 89 with endometrial cancer and 39 with cervical cancer from January 2000 to December 2011. We used the Student's t-test or the Mann-Whitney U test for continuous variables, and the Chi-square or Fisher's exact test for categorical variables.

Complications were found in 44 patients (34.4%). After a multivariate analysis, among the risk factors associated with the presence of complications as the only type of surgery was found to be statistically significant (p = 0.043), more frequent in the most complex procedures such as Wertheim operation, trachelectomy, and para-aortic lymphadenectomy. Type of surgery (p = 0.003) and tumour type (p = 0.003) were risk factors associated with conversion to laparotomy. It was more frequent among the most complex procedures and cervical cancer cases. Regarding the need for transfusion, significant differences were observed in terms of surgery duration (p < 0.001), more frequent in longer surgery.

Morbidity in laparoscopic surgical oncology is related to the surgery complexity, where the basal characteristics of the patient are not a factor of influence in the development of complications.