%0 Journal Article
%T Obesity Disease and Surgery
%A Abdulrahman Saleh Al-Mulhim
%A Hessah Abdulaziz Al-Hussaini
%A Bashaeer Abdullah Al-Jalal
%A Rehab Omar Al-Moagal
%A Sara Abdullah Al-Najjar
%J International Journal of Chronic Diseases
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/652341
%X Obesity is a medical disease that is increasing significantly nowadays. Worldwide obesity prevalence doubled since 1980. Obese patients are at great risk for complications with physical and psychological burdens, thus affecting their quality of life. Obesity is well known to have higher risk for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, musculoskeletal diseases and shorter life expectancy. In addition, obesity has a great impact on surgical diseases, and elective surgeries in comparison to general population. There is higher risk for wound infection, longer operative time, poorer outcome, and others. The higher the BMI (body mass index), the higher the risk for these complications. This literature review illustrates the prevalence of obesity as a diseases and complications of obesity in general as well as, in a surgical point of view, general surgery perioperative risks and complications among obese patients. It will review the evidence-based updates in these headlines. 1. Introduction Obesity is a medical disease that is increasing significantly nowadays. It is classically defined as a body mass index ¡Ý30£¿kg/m2. Almost all healthcare professionals are exposed to obese patients because of their higher risk for morbidity and mortality, and surgeons are not exceptions [1]. Obesity and its severity can be measured by several methods [2]. They include the following.(a)Body mass index (BMI) [1]: this is the most common method to measure obesity in adults (see Table 1(a)) and children (see Table 1(b)).(b)Skin fold thickness [2] (biceps, triceps, subscapular, and suprailiac): it measures the subcutaneous fat to determine the percentage of body fat.(c)Waist circumference [2]: it is a common method to measure the risk of cardiometabolic affection (see Table 2).(d)Waist-to-hip ratio [2]: it examines fat distribution and it is used less frequently.(e)Waist-to-height ratio [3]: waist-to-height ratio is a better screening tool than waist circumference and BMI for adult cardiometabolic risk factors in both sexes (see Table 3). Table 1: (a) Adults and (b) children. Table 2 Table 3 2. Prevalence of Obesity 2.1. Worldwide Worldwide obesity prevalence doubled since 1980 [4]. In 2010, approximately 1.0 billion adults are overweight, and a further 475 million are obese [5]. It was also estimated in 2010 that up to 200 million school-aged children are either overweight or obese; of those, 40¨C50 million are classified as obese [5, 6]. 2.2. Regional (Saudi Arabia) In 2005, the estimated overall obesity prevalence in Saudi Arabia was 35.5% [7]. In 2010, Saudi Arabia was
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2014/652341/