Background: Obesity is a common and increasing condition in Western countries and seems to be associated with increased carcinogenesis and tumor invasiveness. We evaluated operative and clinical outcome in patients operated to treat primary epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) according to their body mass index (BMI).
Methods: All consecutive EOC patients who underwent cytoreductive surgery in our institution between September 2000 and April 2010 were systematically evaluated according to their BMI (kg/m(2)). Survival was calculated by Kaplan-Meier curves. Logistic regression and Cox regression analysis were performed to identify the impact of obesity on surgical outcome and survival.
Results: Three hundred six patients were evaluated. A total of 40.2% were classified as overweight; 87 (28.4%) had a BMI of 25-30 kg/m(2) and 36 (11.8%) had a BMI of ≥30 kg/m(2). No statistically significant differences regarding tumor-related characteristics and comorbidities existed between normal-weight and overweight patients. Median operation time was significantly longer (P = 0.024) in overweight versus normal-weight patients (280 min; range 40-529 vs. 257 min; range 32-592, respectively). Complete tumor resection rates were equivalent between the two patient groups (68.6% vs. 72.5%; P = 0.543) with similar median overall and progression-free survival in both groups (43 vs. 42 months and 21 vs. 17.8 months, respectively). Operative morbidity was also not significantly different between the two groups. By comparable morbidity, operative procedures were similar between normal-weight and overweight patients, apart from higher intestinal and diaphragmatic resection rates in the overweight patients (61% vs. 43.7%; P = 0.004 and 24.4% vs. 14.2%; P = 0.034). In multivariate analysis, BMI of ≥25 kg/m(2) did not reveal any prognostic significance in respect of survival, operative morbidity, and complete tumor resection.
Conclusions: BMI does not appear to influence tumor stage, histology, differentiation grade, or tumor marker levels in patients with primary EOC. Also, BMI is not an independent predictive and prognostic marker of survival, operative outcome, or morbidity at the time of primary tumor debulking.