Abstract
Preoperative risk stratification in cancer surgery is important to improve treatment and outcome. Sarcopenia is defined by progressive and generalized loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength and is now getting attention as a poor prognostic factor. The purpose of this review was to explore the impact of sarcopenia on short and long-term outcomes in patients undergoing surgical resection of gastrointestinal tumors. Recent studies suggest that sarcopenia contributes to postoperative complications and overall survival. The relatively simple evaluability, as well as its modifiable nature, provides an intriguing potential for sarcopenia to be included in standard preoperative clinical evaluation. Such evaluations can provide physicians with important information to target high-risk individuals with prophylactic measures and eventually improve surgical outcomes.
Highlights
Advances in surgical techniques and developments in perioperative care have improved surgical outcomes in gastrointestinal cancer treatment [1,2,3]
Concerning the long-term mortality, Jung et al recently stated that sarcopenia was not significantly related with the short- or long-term overall survival in their study with 229 colorectal cancer patients [45]
During the preoperative evaluation of patients with cancer, the measurement of muscle mass is an easy and inexpensive diagnostic method of sarcopenia, since it is done for staging
Summary
Advances in surgical techniques and developments in perioperative care have improved surgical outcomes in gastrointestinal cancer treatment [1,2,3]. The prognostic gain of tumor resection should be balanced against the substantial risk of adverse reactions such as anastomotic leakage, stenosis and infection. These postoperative complications can have significant implications in mortality, disease recurrence and tolerance to adjuvant therapies [4,5]. With the ageing of the world population, the number of elderly people with cancer is growing. Older patients have more risk of developing perioperative complications and have higher mortality rates.
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