Study: Bariatric surgery lowers cancer risk

Editor's Note

In this large multi-site study, bariatric surgery was associated with a lower risk of cancer, particularly obesity-associated cancers, such as postmenopausal breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and colon cancer.

The study included five study sites with 22,198 patients who had bariatric surgery and 66,427 nonsurgical matched subjects.

At a mean follow-up of 3.5 years, bariatric surgery patients had a 33% lower risk of developing any cancer, compared with nonsurgical patients, and results were even stronger when outcomes were restricted to obesity-associated cancers.

More research is needed to clarify how bariatric surgery lowers cancer risk, the authors say.