Person—waist circumference

Context:

Public health, health care and clinical settings:

Originally used in the calculation of Waist-to-hip ratio which requires the measurement of hip circumference and waist circumference as a predictor of obesity-related morbidity and mortality. More recently it has been used in its own right as an indicator of risk associated with excess abdominal fat.

Comments:

This metadata item applies to persons of all ages.

There is evidence that waist circumference alone might be used to identify people at health risk both from being overweight and from having a central fat distribution (Lean et al. 1995; Han et al. 1995; Pouliot et al. 1994; Seidell et al. 1992). It has been suggested that waist circumference as an index of truncal adiposity in adults may have certain advantages over other measurements of adiposity in predicting obesity related diseases. However, among children and adolescents, waist circumference measures should only be used as a measure of variation in an individual. As yet, no age appropriate cut-off points indicative of risk factors have been developed for use among children and adolescents.