MULTISLICE COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY TO MEASURE VISCERAL FAT AREA IN PATIENT WITH ASTHMA AND OBESITY

Abstract

Asthma and obesity prevalence in population have increased over the last years. In the Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention (GINA, 2017) the “asthma-obesity” phenotype is identified, it has certain clinical features, disease course and response to therapy. One of the hypotheses explaining the relationship between asthma and obesity is the systemic inflammation theory. The visceral adipose tissue (VAT) plays a key role in this hypothesis, it produces various adipokines, imbalance of which results in the state of mild inflammation. With that only the body mass index (BMI) is used to diagnose obesity in asthma patients, but BMI doesn’t take into account the amount of VAT in the body.The clinical case of a patient with asthma in combination with third degree of obesity is presented. Additionally the patient was given a multislice computed tomography to measure the visceral and subcutaneous fat areas, followed by an evaluation of the obtained data and a collation of the parameters with clinical and anthropometric characteristics.

Keywords

• multislice computed tomography
• asthma
• visceral adipose tissue
• obesity