Association between high preoperative body mass index and mortality after cancer surgery

Despite an association between obesity and increased mortality in the general population, obesity has been paradoxically reported with improved mortality of surgery and some types of cancer. However, this has not been fully investigated in patients undergoing cancer surgery. Using a cohort consisting of mostly Asian population, we enrolled 87,567 adult patients who underwent cancer surgery from March 2010 to December 2019. They were divided into three groups according to body mass index (BMI): 53,980 (61.6%) in the normal (18.5-25 kg/m2), 2,787 (3.2%) in the low BMI (<18.5 kg/m2), and 30,800 (35.2%) in the high BMI (≥25 kg/m2) groups. The high BMI group was further stratified into overweight (25-30 kg/m2) and obese (≥30 kg/m2) groups. The primary outcome was mortality during three years after surgery. Following adjustment by inverse probability weighting, mortality during three years after surgery was significantly lower in the high BMI group than the normal (4.8% vs. 7.0%; hazard ratio [HR], 0.69; confidence interval [CI], 0.64-0.77; p < 0.001) and low BMI (4.8% vs. 13.0%; HR: 0.38; CI: 0.35-0.42; p < 0.001) groups. The mortalities of the overweight and obese groups were lower than that of the normal group (7.0% vs. 5.0%; HR: 0.72; CI: 0.67-0.77; p < 0.001 and 7.0% vs. 3.3%; HR: 0.57; CI: 0.50-0.65; p < 0.001, respectively). This association was not observed in female patients and those undergoing surgery for breast and gynecological cancers. High BMI may be associated with decreased mortality after cancer surgery. Further investigations are needed for clinical application of our finding.