Relationship between echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness and different body fat distribution

Abstract

Background: Obesity is a worldwide complicated health problem. It is connected with an amplified cardiovascular mortality and morbidity result from obesity itself on one hand and concomitant with other medical conditions like (diabetes, hypertension,, sleep apnea syndrome, insulin resistance) on other hand. obesity result in multiple functional and structural cardiac changes which may cause heart failure, these changes detected by developed cardiac imaging methods, one of these methods is Echocardiography which is simple, accurate, non-invasive, sensitive diagnostic tool for evaluation of important cardiac changes related to obesity. Objectives: The study is aimed to determine the consequences of obesity on echocardiographic value for epicardial fat thickness in adult and middle age Iraqi persons. Patients and Method: The study was a case-control, based on a non-randomized selected samples from both gender from Basrah city, carried out on 150 subjects aged 20-55 years, persons were grouped according to body mass index to: 1-50 obese (no history of cardiovascular disease) (BMI≥30kg/m2), 2-50 obese having ischemic heart disease (BMI≥30kg/m2), 50 control apparently healthy (BMI 18.5-24.9) Iraqi subjects all persons underwent transthoracic echocardiography to measure the epicardial fat thickness, this value was stated as mean and standard error. This study was done between December 2018 till April 2019 at the Echocardiography Unit in Basrah Teaching Hospital. Results: There was a significant increase in epicardial fat thickness in addition to some anthropometric indices among obese subjects as compared to control group, but waist / thigh, waist/hip and conicity index looked unchanged significantly. Conclusion: Obesity is positively interconnected with increase in epicardial fat thickness in addition to some anthropometric indices that support obesity and can predict cardiovascular risks.