Discriminatory power of indicators predictors of visceral adiposity evaluated by computed tomography in adults and elderly individuals.

INTRODUCTION Identifying anthropometric methods of abdominal adiposity, predictors of excess area of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) allows rapid and low cost evaluation for the risk of cardiovascular diseases in the elderly. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the discriminatory power of anthropometric indicators for detection of excess of the area of VAT. METHODS Cross-sectional study comprising 194 adults and elderly individuals for comparison of both sexes and age groups. Anthropometric variables: waist-to-height Ratio (WHtR), waist-tothigh Ratio (WTR), Abdominal Diameter Index (ADI) and Sagittal Abdominal Diameter Height Index (SAD/Height). The VAT area was identified by computed tomography (CT). Analysis with the ROC curve. RESULTS There was a high correlation between the VAT area and most of the anthropometric indicators (p ≤0.001). Among elderly men, WHtR showed areas under the ROC curve over 0.90 and cutoff of 0.55 (sens: 85.7%; spec: 82.4%, PPV: 99.9%). For older women, the WHtR cutoff was 0.58 (sens: 81.0%; spec: 78.6%). For the SAD/Height, the areas under the ROC curve were ≥0.83 (p ≤0.01), with cutoffs of 0.12 for men and 0.13 for women. CONCLUSION There was a strong discriminatory power of the anthropometric indicators abdominal visceral obesity. The WHtR and SAD/Height showed better performance to predict the VAT area of risk in elderly, without the need of measuring it by computed tomography.