Obesity, defined by excessive fat deposit, is associated with adverse health outcomes and reduced life expectancy and requires long-term intervention.
Obesity is one of the most serious global public health problems. Body mass index BMI is a surrogate marker of fat-related risk and largely used to classify obesity Table 1. Table 1. World Health Organization classification of overweight and obesity in adults. With permission from [1]. Generally, obesity is caused by an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure.
Although the prevalence of obesity increases markedly in the third to fifth decade of life [1, 4], childhood obesity is expected to increase substantially, and is linked with cardiovascular CV morbidity and mortality in adulthood.
Thus, it is important to reduce CV risk as early as childhood, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet being key determinants [1,5]. BMI provides the most useful population-level measure of obesity, but individuals with similar BMI may have different cardiometabolic risk [1,6]. Other measurements, including waist circumference, waist-to-hip or waist-to-height ratios may better predict CV risk [].
Finally, obesity induces pericardial, epicardial, and perivascular adipose tissue and the total fat content surrounding the heart has been associated with prevalent cardiovascular disease CVD , independent of obesity metrics [11]. Notably, epicardial fat has been correlated with subclinical atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease CAD and its evaluation holds promise for cardiometabolic risk stratification in the future [12].
