Feasibility and Safety of Laparoscopic Surgery for Obese Korean Women with Endometrial Cancer: Long-Term Results at a Single Institution

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the surgical feasibility of and survival outcome after laparoscopy in obese Korean women with endometrial cancer which has recently been increasing. We reviewed the medical records of the patients treated at our medical institution between 1999 and 2012. The patients were divided into three groups, non-obese (Body Mass Index [BMI] < 25.0), overweight (BMI 25-27.99), and obese (BMI >= 28.0). These patient groups were compared in terms of their clinical characteristics, treatment methods, as well as surgical and survival outcomes. In total, 55 of the 278 eligible patients were obese women. There were no differences in the three groups in terms of the proportion of patients who underwent lymphadenectomy, their cancer stage, histologic type, type of adjuvant treatment administered, intra-, post-operative, and long-term complications, operative time, number of removed lymph nodes, blood loss, and duration of hospitalization (P = 0.067, 0.435, 0.757, 0.739, 0.458, 0.173, 0.076, 0.124, 0.770, 0.739, and 0.831, respectively). The Disease-Free Survival (DFS) times were 139.1 vs. 121.6 vs. 135.5 months (P = 0.313), and the Overall Survival (OS) times were 145.2 vs. 124.8 vs. 139.5 months (P = 0.436) for each group, respectively. Obese women with endometrial cancer can, therefore, be as safely managed using laparoscopy as women with normal BMIs.