Introduction:

Objective: Sarcopenia has emerged as an important prognostic marker for post-operative complications and mortality in penile cancer patients. Moreover, sarcopenia may be an unrecognized comorbid condition in the obese patient population, however, clinician-friendly software for image segmentation are limited. Thus, we describe the prevalence of sarcopenia in a penile cancer cohort using a web-based platform for analytic morphomics and examine its association between comorbid disease burden.

Methods:

Materials & Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study of patients in the University of Texas Health San Antonio (UTHSCSA) system diagnosed with and treated for squamous cell carcinoma of the penis between October 2009 and December 2019. Clinical and pathologic data were collected. Available digital files of perioperative computerized tomography were analyzed using CoreSlicer. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression was used to model the outcome variable Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI).

Results:

Results: Of the retrospectively identified patients diagnosed with and treated for squamous cell carcinoma of the penis, 42 patients had available perioperative digital files. Median skeletal muscle and fat mass indices were 54.62cm²/m² and 11.49kg/m² respectively for the entire cohort and 54% of patients were sarcopenic. The median fat mass and body mass indices amongst the sarcopenic patients were 11.7kg/m² and 30.2kg/m², respectively. Sarcopenia and age showed a statistically significant association with a CCI greater than 4 on univariable logistic regression with odds ratios of 4.85 (95% CI, 1.06 – 22.11 p = 0.041) and 1.14 (95% CI, 1.02 – 1.3, p = 0.003), respectively. However, on multivariable analysis only age maintained statistical significance (p = 0.02) due to significant collinearity between the two predictors.

Conclusion:

Conclusion: Our data demonstrates that sarcopenia can be readily assessed through the free web-based software CoreSlicer and serves as a potential marker for chronic comorbid condition burden.

Funding: N/A