Obesity--a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases

Infantile and juvenile obesity is a medical, social and cultural problem, which reaches epidemic proportions worldwide. In Romania, according to the World Health Organization, one out of four Romanians is obese. As far as infantile obesity is concerned, Romania ranks third in Europe. Infantile obesity has a major impact on all body systems and is associated with risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and accelerated atherosclerotic processes, including hypertension, atherogenic dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome and functional and structural cardiac changes.

To study the cardiovascular complications of the obesity at children and adolescents.

Our study was conducted on a group of 188 obese and overweight patients that were hospitalized in the Pediatric Cardiology Department, the "Sfânta Maria" Children's Hospital of Iaşi between 1 January 2006 and 1 January 2011. The patients' evaluation was based on: anamnesis, clinical criteria and paraclinical criteria.

The distribution of cases by age group was the following: 51% of patients were aged 7-13 years, 42% were teenagers and only 6% of patients were aged between 2-6 years. As far as the patients' origin is concerned, we noted that 58% of them lived in urban areas. In the study group, 21% of the subjects had borderline hypertension, while 16% of them suffered from definite hypertension. The echocardiogram that was performed on all the patients included in the study revealed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in 12% of the patients.

Child obesity has a major impact on all the big body systems and it is known to contribute to significant increases in the mortality and morbidity rates.