Background: Childhood obesity is becoming more prevalent, associated with a variety of adverse consequences which leads to adulthood obesity. Although diagnosis is usually made by body mass index, there is neither a cutoff point for the percentage body fat nor abdominal circumference. The aim of this study was to identify each cutoff point for both measures. Methods: The measurement of height, weight, abdominal circumference and percentage body fat was performed through manual assessment and bioelectrical impedance analysis for 4,242 subjects aged 11 in Gunpo City, South Korea. The cutoff point for body fat percentage and abdominal circumference is set to maximize the sum of sensitivity and specificity for detecting obesity and overweight using the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve. Results: The mean percentage body fat was 13.6±6.9% for boys and 19.4±5.3% for girls. The mean abdominal circumference of boys was 68.0±9.1 cm, and that of girls was 64.3±7.7 cm. The cutoff point of percentage body fat for obesity was 21.8% in boys and 24.5% in girls. The prevalence of obesity was 15.2%, 16.7% for males and females, respectively. The abdominal circumference cutoff for obesity was 76.9 cm in boys and 70.7cm in girls. Based on that, the prevalence of obesity was 19.7% for boys and 20.0% for girls, which was higher than what was identified by body mass index, as in the case of body fat percentage. Conclusion: The cutoffs of body fat percentage and abdominal circumference in one city of Gyeonggi Province were lower than those suggested in the previous studies. (J Korean Acad Fam Med 2008;29:492-498)
Background : Recently, body composition analyzer has been used widely clinically. Various indirectly measured values of body are calculated without direct measuring. The abdominal circumference that is presented by such instrument may be used for diagnosing abdominal obesity, but the reliable evidence of the accuracy and the validity may be not be enough for application to general population. For this reason, the author investigated the usefulness of automatically produced abdominal circumference for diagnosing abdominal obesity.
Methods : The medical records of 5,555 outpatients who had undergone body composition analysis in a tertiary hospital was collected. The usefulness of the automatically presented abdominal circumference for diagnosing abdominal obesity among general population was investigated.
Results : There was a significant positive correlation between abdominal circumference measured by body composition analyzer and measuring tape in the normal, the overweight, and the obese groups of both gender. But, the results were the same only in females in the underweight group. The most significant difference between the two values were 4.8±5.0 cm in normal male group and -5.7±5.5 cm in female obese group. The difference of the male obese group was lesser than that of the overweight, the normal and the underweight groups. The difference of the male overweight group was lesser than that of the normal group. The difference of the female obese group was lesser than that of the overweight, the normal and the underweight groups. The sensitivity and specificity to detect abdominal obese person among the total subjects was 76.3% and 79.1%, respectively. The specificity was higher in all male and the normal female groups, wheras the sensitivity was higher in the obese and the overweight female groups.
Conclusion : Physicians should confirm the accuracy of abdominal circumference, especially in normal males and obese female group, although the automatically presented value is convenient and reflects the manually measured one very well which is useful to diagnose abdominal obesity.
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