LAUSR

We investigated the long-term prognostic impact of diabetes mellitus (DM) after gastrectomy for advanced gastric cancer. This was a retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients who underwent gastrectomy for primary p-T2 or more advanced-stage gastric cancer, between April, 2008 and June, 2018. The overall survival (OS) of patients with DM and those without DM were compared using Kaplan–Meier survival analysis after adjusting for group differences using propensity score matching (PSM). Among the 512 patients who met the eligibility criteria, 92 (18.0%) had DM and 420 (82.0%) did not. After PSM, the subjects of this analysis were 72 patients in the DM group and 216 patients in the non-DM. OS was significantly worse in the DM group than in the non-DM group (P = 0.037). Multivariate analysis revealed that a low skeletal muscle mass index was a significant independent prognostic factor for OS in the patients with DM (hazard ratio, 2.284; 95% confidence interval, 1.005–5.189; P = 0.048). DM in patients with advanced gastric cancer is associated with poor OS. A low skeletal muscle mass in patients with DM is a particularly poor prognostic factor for OS after surgery for gastric cancer.