A totally laparoscopic distal gastrectomy can be an effective way of performing laparoscopic gastrectomy in obese patients (body mass index≥30).

Background: In the surgical treatment of gastric cancer, obesity is known to be a predictive factor for poor early surgical outcomes. To evaluate the more effective modality of laparoscopic gastrectomy in obese patients, we compared the early surgical outcomes of laparoscopy-assisted and totally laparoscopic gastrectomy.
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed early surgical outcomes in 1,480 consecutive patients who underwent distal gastrectomy for gastric cancer between April 2004 and July 2010. To compare surgical outcomes of laparoscopy-assisted distal gastrectomy (LADG) with those of totally laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (TLDG) in 76 obese patients (LADG, n = 39; TLDG, n=37), the patients were classified as either obese or nonobese. The obesity was defined using the WHO classification BMI cutoff of 30 kg/m2.
Results: In the analysis of surgical outcomes of the LADG group, there were significant differences between the obese and nonobese groups with respect to operative time (P=0.004, obese, 171.8 min; nonobese, 141.0 min), time to first flatus (P=0.027, obese, 3.3 days; nonobese, 3.1 days), commencement of soft diet (P=0.040, obese, 4.6 days; nonobese, 4.0 days), postoperative complication rate (P=0.045, obese, 15.4%; nonobese, 6.5%), and postoperative hospital stay (P=0.014, obese, 8.9 days; nonobese, 7.2 days). In TLDG group, on the other hand, there were no significant differences in surgical outcomes between the groups.
Conclusion: Based on these findings, early surgical outcomes of LADG were strongly influenced by the obesity. TLDG without minilaparotomy, however, was unaffected by the obesity. These findings strongly suggest that TLDG could be a safe procedure to avoid the impact of obesity.