Presurgical Assessment of Intra-abdominal Visceral Fat in Obese Patients

To date, obesity is simply defined as body mass index (BMI) higher or equal to 30 kg/m2 (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute/National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney diseases 1998). Although BMI is widely accepted as a marker of adiposity in population-based studies, and is recognized as an instrument to diagnose obesity for all age groups, it should be more properly seen as an index of weight excess, rather than body fatness.