Visceral Obesity Predicts Fewer Lymph Node Metastases and Better Overall Survival in Colon Cancer

The relationship between visceral obesity and colon cancer outcome has not been well studied. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of visceral obesity on lymph node (LN) metastasis and overall survival (OS) in colon cancer. Metastatic LN ratio (MLR) was defined as the number of involved nodes by tumor divided by the total number of resected LNs. Visceral (VFA) and subcutaneous fat areas (SFA) were determined by measuring abdominal fat volume distribution via CT scan, and visceral obesity was defined as a VFA to total fat area ratio (V/T) > 0.29. In a multivariate analysis among 186 patients, there were inverse associations between V/T and MLR (OR = 0.413, 95 % CI = 0.216-0.789, P = 0.007). Furthermore, patients with visceral obesity tended to have significantly better OS than patients with non-visceral obesity. Higher V/T ratios which indicate referring to visceral obesity was significantly associated with decreased MLR and better OS for CRC.