I'm not aware of any way to avoid duplicating the code.   You have to initialize @@FETCH_STATUS before you can check it's value, and the only way to do that is via FETCH NEXT.   You could create a separate stored procedure whose parameters are entirely those defined for the cursor to deliver values into, and then execute that once before the loop, and then once inside the loop, and that would minimize code duplication, but that's a long way to go for not much savings, plus the overhead of another 2 procedure calls, or however many times the loop runs....