{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03764705882352941, 'fraction_numerical': 0.023529411764705882, 'mean_word_length': 5.040852575488454, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Sharp rise in esophageal cancer and Barrett esophagus seen in middle‐aged people

American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Studies Two studies presented at the 2022 American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) annual meeting also found a benefit of bariatric surgery in lowering cancer risk.4,5 A retrospective cohort study compared cancer incidence, type of cancer, and survival between 1651 bariatric surgical patients (gastric bypass surgery in 1267 and sleeve gastrectomy in 384 patients) and 2181 nonsurgical controls matched by age, sex, and BMI. Lead author of the study Jared Miller, MD, a general and bariatric surgeon at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and his colleagues found that obese patients who did not undergo bariatric surgery were two times more likely to develop new cancers and 3.5 times more likely to die from cancer as compared to patients who underwent bariatric surgery.4 The 10-year incidence of any new cancer was 5.2% versus 13.4% in the bariatric surgical group and nonsurgical group, respectively. When looking at specific cancers, patients who underwent bariatric surgery had reductions in breast cancer (1.4% as compared to 2.7% in nonsurgical patients), gynecologic cancer (0.4% vs. 2.6%), kidney cancer (0.1% vs. 0.8%), brain cancer (0.2% vs. 0.9%), lung cancer (0.2% vs. 0.6%), and thyroid cancer (0.1% vs. 0.7%). Patients who underwent bariatric surgery also had higher 10-year survival rates compared to the nonsurgical patients (92.9% vs. 78.9%). In the second study presented at ASMBS, Michal Janik, MD, PhD, a general and bariatric surgeon at the Military Institute of Aviation Medicine in Warsaw, Poland, and his colleagues reported on the findings of a meta-analysis that examined the association of weight-loss surgery on colorectal cancer risk.5 The research included 13 studies of more than 3.2 million patients published between 2008 and 2021 and underscored that the meta-analysis is an update from earlier systematic reviews and includes important new studies that support the observation that weight-loss surgery reduces colorectal risk. The updated meta-analysis found a greater than 37% reduction in the risk of developing colorectal cancer after bariatric surgery compared to nonsurgery patients. “Bariatric surgery may offer significant protection against colorectal cancer in individuals with obesity that extends at least 10 years, the length of follow-up in several of the studies we analyzed,” said Dr Janik in a press release. Not addressed in the study and left unanswered was whether different surgical procedures carried the same risk reduction effect, and which patient populations may benefit the most. Shanu Kothari, MD, the immediate past president of ASMBS and a bariatric surgeon at Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina, underscored that patients who have weight-loss surgery not only experience lower cancer rates, but also lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and strokes. “These are important factors that should create greater urgency among clinicians and patients to treat obesity, particularly with weight-loss surgery,” he said. “Obesity and cancer are inextricably linked in many cases,” he added. “The take home message for oncologists is that earlier referral to the bariatric surgical team for patients with obesity could be preventive for many cancers they treat.”