Diabetics Fare Better Post Colon Cancer Surgery

Thu, 15 Apr 2010
Diabetics fare better post colon cancer surgery than others, so finds a new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The lead researcher, Dr. Geoffrey C. Nguyen, from the University of Toronto, made this surprising finding.

Nguyen and his team considered the records of amost 220,000 individuals who had colon cancer surgery at American hospitals between 1995 and 2005.

85 per cent of them did not have diabetes, with 14 percent having uncomplicated diabetes, that is, diabetes with unrelated problems like loss of vision and kidney disease, and 1 per cent were suffering from complicated diabetes.

3.2 percent of non diabetic patients died in the hospital post surgery, whereas, 2.5 percent of diabetics did.

The difference only appeared among patients with uncomplicated diabetes, 2.4 percent of whom died, in contrast to 4.2 percent of those with complicated diabetes.

Hence, it was worked out that those with uncomplicated diabetes are at a 29 percent lower risk of death than those with complicated diabetes.

28 per cent of those with uncomplicated diabetes had surgery related complications post surgery, such as, an infection, in comparison to 31 percent of non-diabetics, which means that they are at 18 percent lower risk.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.