Anthropometry

Anthropometry is a technique used for assessment of nutritional status of individuals. The word, from the Greek clubs (men) and symmetry (measured), is defined as "tried and measures the proportions of the human body."The term nutritional anthropometry was defined in 1966 by Jelliffe, as modifications of the variations in composition and physical dimensions of the human body coarse different age levels and degrees of nutrition.Anthropometric measurements, which are of two types, size and body composition, have growing importance in the nutritional assessment, and allow objective quantification of individual and group nutritional status, provided they take them properly trained. The measures of size, physical size and regional distribution of body fat, you can identify problems of malnutrition, either by excess (overweight and obesity) or deficiency (malnutrition).Anthropometry is of public health importance, because it is a tool for population screening, user friendly, low cost, are noninvasive, easily repeatable, requiring few instruments easily achievable and transports. It also serves to characterize the nutritional status, evaluate interventions, monitor trends over time, direct advocacy and resource allocations.The anthropometric assessment is classified into two forms: growth and body composition. For growth requires taking measures weight and height, which are related through indicators of height for age, weight for age and weight for height, used in the classification of nutritional status, and to determine body composition requires taking measurements of skinfolds and body circumferences.The measurements can be compared to a reference population, using tables expressing percentile values ​​and relationships as body mass index (BMI), which is used in the diagnosis and classification of obesity.The estimate of obesity in childhood, both clinical and epidemiological, are made from the Body Mass Index (BMI), defining overweight and obesity using percentiles. Currently, there is no comparative approach agreed by the international scientific community on the definition of obesity in this age group. Currently, in the United States of America (U.S.) and other countries, obesity is defined with p95 and overweight with p85 (p85 to p95 percentage) in Europe and Asia are used to p97 p85 to obesity and overweight. Thus, the same criteria applies globally to the definition of overweight (p85) but there is no agreement on the definition of obesity (p95 or p97 by country). On the other hand, has neither international agreement regarding the reference tables, which should be used to facilitate comparison between studies from different countries. Using the same reference tables would be very useful to compare the prevalence of obesity between countries or between different population subgroups within the same country. Differences in prevalence of obesity showing the child population studies are partly justified by the absence of a consensual agreement on the cutoff points for obesity according to BMI. At present there are several reference tables worldwide. The most commonly used are those from the National Health and Nutrition Study Examination Survey (NHANES) (U.S., 1971 1974) developed by Must et al. Other reference tables are provided by the Centers for deseases Control (CDC) (USA) representing the revision of U.S. growth charts (United Status of America) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).The World Health Organization (WHO) in order to define overweight and obesity, recommended body mass index (BMI), which is calculated using the measurement of body weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. The BMI cut-off points used in adults, can not be used in children and adolescents which are used percentiles for age and sex. In the United States and much of the studies, the cut points are used to overweight percentile = or> = 85 and for obesity or greater than 95