BMI alternative for identifying obesity ‘could prevent misdiagnosis in millions’

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Doctors say diagnosing obesity with BMI alongside other measurements and tests could reduce misdiagnosis and improve care. The proposed approach aims to distinguish healthy people from those with harmful excess body fat more accurately than BMI alone.

Combining body mass index with other measurements and tests would lead to better care and outcomes, experts say An alternative to BMI for diagnosing obesity could prevent misdiagnosis in millions of people worldwide, according to doctors who found it more accurately distinguished healthy people from those with harmful excess body fat. Medical experts have long considered body mass index a blunt instrument for defining obesity, leading to concerns that substantial numbers of people with excess body fat are missed while others who are healthy are wrongly diagnosed. Continue reading...