Is BMI associated with post-operative complication risk among patients undergoing major abdominal surgery for cancer? A systematic review.

We systematically reviewed 118 studies comparing peri-operative outcomes among obese and non-obese patients. Obesity was associated with longer operative time in 60% of available studies. Just 35.8% of studies that evaluated overall morbidity identified high morbidity in obese patients. Lymph node yield or surgical margin status, was only affected by obesity in 19.6% of studies. In this review obesity was frequently found to have no effect on peri-operative and oncologic outcomes.