The Impact of Laparoscopic-assisted Colorectal Surgery Using 3-dimensional Reconstruction for Highly Obese Patients With Colorectal Cancer.

Objectives: During laparoscopic-assisted colorectal surgery (LACS), precise recognition of the anatomic variations and relationships among tumor and vessels is required. However, in highly obese patients, it is more difficult to grasp the surgical anatomy due to the presence of dense mesenteric fat tissue. We utilized a 3-dimensional (3D) reconstructed image for preoperative simulation and intraoperative navigation for LACS. In this study, we examined the correlation between patient obesity and 3D-simulated perioperative outcomes.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 124 patients who underwent LACS using 3D surgical simulation at Tsukuba Medical Center Hospital. We sequentially divided our cohort into 2 groups: patients with a low body mass index (BMI<25 kg/m, n=60) and patients with a high BMI (BMI ≥25 kg/m, n=64). Patient characteristics and perioperative outcomes, including conversion rate, postoperative complications, operating time, intraoperative blood loss, and length of postoperative hospital stay, were compared for these 2 groups.

Results: There were no significant differences in patient background between the 2 groups.We found it more difficult to grasp the surgical anatomy, including vessel arrangement, for high-BMI patients than for low-BMI patients because of the dense mesenteric fat tissue in high-BMI patients. There were no significant differences between the 2 groups with respect to perioperative outcomes.

Conclusions: The utilized reconstructed 3D images were useful for understanding anatomic relationships, including vessel arrangement, during LACS, particularly in highly obese patients.