SAGITTAL DIAMETER MINUS SUBCUTANEOUS THICKNESS - AN EASY-TO-OBTAIN PARAMETER THAT IMPROVES VISCERAL FAT PREDICTION

Two groups of 99 and 98 women were studied to test if correcting sagit tal diameter by subtracting the thickness of subcutaneous abdominal ad ipose tissue improves its degree of association with visceral adipose tissue, The first group (age, 40 +/- 14 years; body mass index [BMI], 36 +/- 6 kg/m(2)) was used to calculate the predictive equations for v isceral adipose tissue, The second group (age, 43 +/- 14 years; BMI, 3 7 +/- 6 kg/m(2)) was used for cross-validation, Various anthropometric parameters were measured by ultrasound and computed tomography, Corre lation coefficients with single-slice visceral adipose tissue area, af ter sagittal diameter was corrected by subtracting subcutaneous thickn ess, rose from 0.63 to 0.72 in the first group and from 0.64 to 0.71 i n the second group, The standard error of residuals of the regression formula for visceral adipose tissue area was 10% lower with modified s agittal diameter than with sagittal diameter alone, During cross-valid ation, the standard error of differences was 5% lower with modified sa gittal diameter, The visceral adipose tissue estimate was also less bi ased by the size of the area when sagittal diameter minus subcutaneous thickness was used, Results show that subtracting the thickness of ab dominal subcutaneous adipose tissue from sagittal diameter significant ly improves the predictive power of sagittal diameter for visceral adi pose tissue and could be a useful tool for epidemiological studies.