A new study found that aside from helping overweight and obese women trim their weight, bariatric surgery can also reduce their risks of developing uterine cancer by up to 71 percent.
Bariatric surgery is a procedure that reduces that size of the stomach through surgically removing of a part of it or by cutting and diverting the small intestines to a tiny stomach pouch.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center concluded that bariatric surgery promotes weight loss in women. This contributes to the decreased risk of women from developing uterine cancer.
The research team analyzed the data of 7,431, 858 patients in the UniversityHealthSystem Consortium database that contains information from contributing academic medical centers and affiliated centers in the United States.
Of the total number of patients, 103,797 had undergone bariatric surgery, while 44,345 were diagnosed with uterine cancer. They categorized the patients into currently obese and non-obese groups. Afterwards, they divided them whether they underwent bariatric surgery or not.
Their findings revealed that non-obese women who underwent bariatric surgery showed a 71 percent lower risk of developing uterine cancer, while those who have maintained their weight after the surgery had an 81 percent lower risk.
Meanwhile, obese women who had the surgery showed 52 percent lower risk of developing uterine cancer.
"Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death, and this research adds to the growing evidence that reducing obesity reduces cancer. We need to focus on finding ways to help women lose weight, and for appropriate patients, bariatric surgery may be an option, said study first author Kristy Ward, M.D., a senior gynecologic oncology fellow in the Department of Reproductive Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in a press release.
Further details of this study will be published in the April issue of Gynecologic Oncology.
