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Background: Gastric cancer can recur soon after treatment. We evaluated the prognostic nutritional index (PNI), a predictor of postoperative complications, and examined the association of PNI with progression and recurrence of gastric cancer. Methods: We retrospectively investigated data from 697 patients who had undergone surgery for gastric carcinoma (excluding those with stage IV disease) and analyzed associations of age, sex, performance status (PS), American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification, diabetes, depth of main tumor (T), lymph node metastasis, postoperative complications, recurrence, and survival with PNI. We also performed multivariate analysis to identify factors associated with survival. Results: PNI significantly decreased with age and was significantly lower in women. PNI was significantly positively correlated with PS. PNI was significantly lower for =T2 cancers and in patients with lymph node metastasis. There was no association between postoperative complications and PNI. PNI was significantly lower for patients who developed recurrence than for those who did not. The survival rate was examined for groups with a PNI of =45 (high PNI) and <45 (low PNI). Both 5-year overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CS) were significantly worse for the low PNI group. Multivariate analysis showed that PNI was an independent predictor of OS and CS. Conclusions: PNI was associated with progression and recurrence of gastric cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A recent increase in the number of surgeries performed on obese patents has raised several issues. In this study, we examined the effects of obesity on laparoscopic and open distal gastrectomy. Methods: A total of 262 patients with gastric cancer (cStage I) who underwent distal gastrectomy were classified into open distal gastrectomy (ODG) (145 patients) and laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (LDG) (117 patients) groups. According to their body mass index (BMI), they were subdivided into obese (BMI = 25) and non-obese patients (BMI < 25) to examine the duration of surgery, blood loss, the number of lymph node dissections, postoperative hospital stay, and incidence of postoperative complications. Results: The duration of surgery was longer and blood loss was higher for obese patients than for nonobese patients in both groups. The results for these two endpoints were significantly reduced in the LDG group than in the ODG group both in obese and non-obese patients. Furthermore, the number of lymph nodes dissected tended to be higher in the LDG group than in the ODG group in obese patients. Postoperative hospital stay was not significantly different between obese and non-obese patients in both groups, but was significantly shorter in the LDG group than in the ODG group regardless of the body weight. The incidence of postoperative complications was significantly higher in obese patients than in non-obese patients, although the difference between the groups was not significant. Conclusions: These findings indicate that LDG may be useful for obese patients with cStage I gastric cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]