Evaluating the empathy level of tomorrow's physicians is paramount in highlighting this subject in medical education. The well-known tool for measuring empathy is Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ).The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of empathy of medical students in the first and second years of medical training at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje using the TEQ.This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted during October 2022, as an online survey among first-and second-year medical students at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje. An anonymous online self-report questionnaire distributed via Google Forms was used. One section of the questionnaire addressed the socio-demographic data, year of study and gender. The second section included the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ).There was a moderately strong consistency among the answers of the students to the 16 questions of the TEQ (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.55). The total score varied in the interval 35.42±5.80; ±95.00CI:34.79-36.05). The total score for empathy among female students was insignificantly higher than among male students; Z = -0.35 and p>0.05 (p=0.072), and the total score for empathy among second-year students was significantly higher than among first-year students; Z = -5.17 and p<0.05 (p=0.000).Understanding and assessing the level of empathy of medical students during medical education is an important issue addressed during medical training.

Abdominal obesity (AO) has been associated with children's risk of metabolic and cardiovascular disease. For this reason, the aim of this study was to provide gender-specific percentiles of anthropometric indices WC and WHR to identify AO in children aged 9.In this study, a total of 320 children aged 9 (160 boys and 160 girls) were investigated. We selected four parameters to measure (weight and height) and two circumferences (waist and hip) using a standard protocol. The following indices are taken into consideration Body-Mass Index (BMI), Waist Circumference (WC) and Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR). The percentile distribution of the tested parameters was done by gender.General obesity based on the BMI cut-off occurs at 5.63% in boys and 6.88 % in girls. Abdominal obesity across cut-off points WHR and WC-for age>=90th percentile occur at 11.88% and 6.26% in boys and 12.5 and 11.25% in girls respectively. Both the WHR and WC identify more children with abdominal obesity, but we note that more girls were classified as obese than boys.However, the anthropometric indices of WC and WHR, complement nutritional evaluation and are of great importance for the early detection of AO in our 9-year-old children.These findings support the need to use the measurement of WC as a strong predictor for AO in routine clinical practice.