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Hindi Research Article
Overweight and Obesity does not Increase Severity of Pulmonary Embolism
| Nongnooch Poowanawittayakom1* and Clifton Clarke2 | |
| 1Department of Medicine, Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA | |
| 2Department of Pulmonology, Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA | |
| Corresponding Author : | Nongnooch Poowanawittayakom, MD Department of Medicine Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center Chicago, IL, USA Tel: 773-975-1600 E-mail: nongnooch.poowanawittayakom@advocatehealth.com |
| Received October 26, 2013; Accepted January 22, 2014; Published January 24, 2014 | |
| Citation: Poowanawittayakom N, Clarke C (2014) Overweight and Obesity does not Increase Severity of Pulmonary Embolism. J Obes Weight Loss Ther 4:206. doi:10.4172/2165-7904.1000206 | |
| Copyright: © 2014 Poowanawittayakom N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
Abstract
Obesity defined as body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2 has been shown to be a risk factor and a prognosticator in many populations. Whether obesity is specifically a prognosticator for pulmonary embolism is not well known. In the present study, 194 patients with BMI between 14 and 88 kg/m2 (44% males mean age 59 ± 18 years, median BMI 30.3 kg/m2) who were diagnosed with PE were included in this cross-sectional study. The logistic regression analysis showed that being overweight or obese (defined as BMI>25 kg/m2) was an independent variable predicting being in a low-risk group with OR of 2.39 (95% confidence interval 1.10, 5.21) and p value of 0.028. Paradoxically, overweight or obese patients with PE have better prognostic outcomes compared to underweight or normal weight patients defined by the simplified PESI (sPESI) which is commonly used to estimate the risk of 30-day mortality in patients with acute pulmonary embolism (PE) in our study.
