Can we recognise obesity clinically?
- 1York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Wigginton Road, York, UK
- 2Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
- 3Leeds Primary Care Trust and University of Leeds, 3–5 Belmont Grove, Leeds, UK
- S M Smith, York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Wigginton Road, York YO31 8HE, UK; sally.smith{at}york.nhs.uk
- Accepted 20 April 2008
- Published Online First 2 May 2008
Abstract
The aim of this study was to ascertain whether health care professionals are able to accurately identify overweight and obese children by observation alone. Eighty health care professionals were asked to view photographs of 33 children and assign each into one of six categories, ranging from “very underweight” to “obese”. The health care professionals’ categorisation was compared with the children’s degree of adiposity based on conventional clinical criteria for BMI. The health care professionals were found to be generally poor at assessing the weight status of the children, and in particular tended to underestimate overweight and obesity in children. This study suggests that it is not appropriate to rely on informal assessment to identify obesity and highlights the need for health care professionals to be aware of their lack of accuracy in this regard.
Footnotes
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Funding: None.
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Competing interests: None.
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Ethics approval: Ethics committee approval was obtained from Leeds East ethics committee.
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Patient consent: Written consent was obtained from all children and their parents for the use of their photographs and weight and height measurements.
