A Practice‐Focused Overview of Methods to Assess Obesity Before Arthroplasty

Abstract

Obesity is associated with poorer outcomes after hip and knee arthroplasty. Body mass index is the most commonly used measure of obesity, but it does not reliably assess body composition. This paper reviewed the literature to provide a practice focused overview of existing approaches to measure obesity and discussed their suitability in informing decisions for hip and knee arthroplasty. We found that measures of obesity that are practical in clinical settings and high utility when making decisions on arthroplasty could be clustered into three groups: reliable but costly; inexpensive and assessing body composition; and inexpensive without body composition assessment. Measures of obesity of value to surgeons' decision making could be drawn from a combination of the first or second group measures with the third group.