Introduction:

Surgical resection is the first-line treatment for patients with resectable gastric cancer. The impact of preoperative sarcopenia on the post-operative outcomes of these patients remains unclear. For this reason, we studied the association between sarcopenia and its prognostic value for gastric cancer patients undergoing surgery.

Methods:

A retrospective, observational, longitudinal, and descriptive analysis was conducted. A sample of 147 patients, who underwent gastrectomy at the Hospital of Braga between January 2008 and December 2016, was considered. Sarcopenia was diagnosed using ImageJ® software by measuring total abdominal area through axial images of preoperative computed tomography scans. The Prado et al. cut-off for sarcopenia was used. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS®-26.0 version. The Overall Survival (OS) of these patients was assessed using Kaplan-Meier method. Multivariate Cox Regression was performed to evaluate independent risk factors for OS.

Results:

Thirty-two (21.8%) of the evaluated patients had sarcopenia. Sarcopenia was significantly more frequently diagnosed in males (p=0.040); yet no significant relation was established with patients' age (p=0.114). Sarcopenia influenced the presence of postoperative complications (p=0.01), length of hospital stay (p<0.001) and OS (p=0.027). However, it did not prove to be an independent prognostic factor for worse OS, unlike age and TNM stage which were found to be independent risk factors for OS.

Conclusion:

Our results demonstrate that sarcopenia influences incidence and severity of postoperative complications, length of hospital stay and OS of patients with gastric cancer who underwent surgery.

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