Abstract
25 Background: There have been reports implicating underweight status as well as obesity with lower survival in colorectal cancer patients, but data has been inconsistent. Methods: In this retrospective observational study, we gathered pre-treatment data on BMI and other co-morbidities from 423 colon cancer patients who underwent surgical resection (stages I to III) or were metastatic at diagnosis (stage IV) at VCU Medical Center from 2005 to 2018 and analyzed their survival outcomes. Results: Compared to patients with a normal BMI, patients with underweight status (BMI < 18.5) have a trend towards higher all-cause mortality (HR 1.66, 95% CI 0.67-4.12). Patients with overweight BMI (25-29.9) and obese BMI ( > 30) have a trend towards improved mortality (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.46-0.98) (HR 0.75, 95% CI 0.53-1.07) respectively. The p-value was 0.0675. We also found that pre-existing diabetes mellitus is associated with increased all-cause mortality (HR 1.43, CI 1.03 to 1.98, p < 0.05), as well as the use of aspirin at diagnosis (HR 1.60, CI 1.16 to 2.21, p < 0.05). Conclusions: Our results are similar to previous findings that patients with underweight status have worse mortality outcome, suggesting the importance of nutritional status prior to starting treatment. We also found that overweight and obese patients have trends towards improved survival compared to normal weight patients. Future focus can be directed to see whether overweight or obesity status past diagnosis affect survival trends. Aspirin use at diagnosis in our study population is associated with worse mortality outcome; literature is conflicting with outcomes and pre-diagnosis aspirin use. Our findings are similar for both locoregional colon cancers as well as metastatic disease. Research should be directed at seeing what kind of interventions such as nutrition or rehabilitation can be used to ameliorate the increased mortality trend in the underweight status group of patients.
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