Body mass index and perioperative course in women with breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women. The morbidity and mortality rates have been increasing for years in Poland. At the same time, the number of obese people has been increasing in Western Europe, USA, highly developed countries and Poland. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of obesity on a perioperative course in women originally operated for breast cancer. We performed a retrospective analysis of a group of 2091 women operated on between 1994 and 2002 with respect to the influence of BMI on different elements of the perioperative course.
There were 34% of premenopausal women and 66% of postmenopausal women. The mean value of the body mass index (BMI in kg/m²) in the analyzed group was 26.66 kg/m². Patients with higher BMI had more clinically advanced cancer (larger tumor, more metastases in lymph nodes). The mean duration of surgery in the studied group was 60.53 minutes. The average period of hospitalization after surgery was 9.73 days. No deaths were observed during the perioperative course. After surgery wound infection occurred more often in patients with high BMI (>27 kg/m²) (3.08%) than in women with BMI under 27 kg/m² (1.89%) – p=0.0409. Women with high BMI had higher body temperature after operation (p=0.0037) and were hospitalized for a longer time (on average, 2.6 days – p=0.0000).
On the basis of the analysis, it has been found that obesity extended hospitalization time and increased the risk of wound infection.