Splenectomy during Gastric Cancer Surgery versus Splenectomy during Extra-gastric Abdominal Cancer Surgery.

Objective: To evaluate the clinicopathological differences between splenectomy during gastric cancer surgery and splenectomy during extra-gastric abdominal cancer surgery.

Study Design: Observational study.

Place And Duration Of Study: Erzurum Regional Education and Research Hospital, Erzurum, Turkey between January 2015 and January 2020.

Methodology: Patients who were operated due to intra-abdominal malignancies were searched retrospectively. Among those patients, concomitant splenectomy cases were filtered for the study. The patients' general clinicopathological characteristics were retrieved from their medical records. Patients were divided into two groups, according to the objectives. The clinicopathological differences between the groups were evaluated with appropriate statistical tests, assuming significant p value of less than 0.05.

Results: The study included 45 patients. The mean age of the patients was 62.84 ± 12.59 (30-86 years), and male to female ratio was 19:26. Splenectomy was performed during gastric cancer surgery in 30 patients (66.7%) and 43 patients (95.6%) were operated in elective conditions. There was a need for more erythrocyte suspension in patients, who underwent splenectomy during gastric cancer surgery (p=0.040). However, length of hospital stay and overall morbidity were higher at splenectomy with extra-gastric cancer group, (p = 0.036 and p = 0.011, respectively).

Conclusion: Splenectomy during gastric cancer surgery is more demanding; and requires more erythrocyte suspension. However, these patients had less morbidity tendencies. Length of stay was longer with splenectomy during extra-gastric abdominal cancer group.

Key Words: Splenectomy, Gastric cancer, Length of stay, Morbidity.