title: Decreased Inpatient Mortality in Obese Patients with Abdominal Nets.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) of the abdomen are rare tumors with an incidence of 3.56 per 100,000 in the general population. Obesity is a growing public health problem with varying effects on severity of other disease. We investigated the association between obesity and inpatient morbidity/mortality in patients with abdominal neuroendocrine tumors utilizing the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS).
  
  
  METHODS
  We analyzed data from the NIS database to investigate the association between obesity and abdominal NETs using patient information from 22,096 patient-discharges from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We demonstrate that obesity is strongly associated with decreased rates of inpatient mortality in patients with NET (OR = 0.6, multivariate P = 0.02) and that malnutrition is associated with nearly 5-fold higher odds of inpatient mortality (multivariate P < 0.0005). We did not find a statistical interaction between obesity and malnutrition; however, patients who were both malnourished and obese had a lower association with mortality risk than purely malnourished patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our data suggests that nutritional status may be an important factor in inpatient mortality in patients with NETs with obesity being protective.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Surgery, The University of Arizona.
authors.forename: Evan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Glazer
authors.forename: Kelley
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Stanko
authors.forename: Evan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ong
authors.forename: Marlon
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guerrero
keywords: Nationwide Inpatient Sample; abdominal neuroendocrine tumors; inpatient mortality