If you are obese you may have a harder time fighting off pancreatic cancer. That is the finding of a new study released in the Archives of Surgery Archives of Surgery. It says pancreatic cancer patients who are obese may be 12 times more likely to have cancer that has already spread to their lymph nodes at the time of surgery, compared to similar patients who weigh less.

Obese patients tended to have larger tumors and were less likely to get chemotherapy or radiation prior to surgery than other patients. However, the survival rate did not seem to be due to the delivery of cancer care or surgical complications related to excess weight, says study author Jason B. Fleming, MD, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “People often wonder if obese patients have a worse outcome because they are more inherently at risk for complications, and we did not find that,” he says.

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