Overweight and obesity in children treated for congenital heart disease

Overweight and Obesity in Patients with Congenital Heart Disease: A Systematic Review

“…Twenty-six of the included studies were cross-sectional studies that examined the prevalence of overweight and obesity in patients with CHD [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ], and four were cohort studies that investigated the longitudinal change of the prevalence across the lifespan [ 10 , 43 , 44 , 45 ]. The body composition of patients with CHD was compared to a healthy reference cohort in 13 of the included studies [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 33 , 35 , 40 , 41 , 45 ], whereas 9 studies merely investigated the prevalence of overweight and obesity in patients with CHD [ 10 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 24 , 32 , 36 ,…”

“…BMI values were converted into age and gender-specific z-Scores in a subset of studies [ 10 , 17 , 18 , 38 , 40 ]. Fourteen studies converted the BMI into percentiles based on various growth charts, classifying patients with BMI ≥85th–<95th percentile as overweight and those with BMI ≥ 95th percentile as obese [ 10 , 19 , 23 , 24 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 36 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 43 , 45 ].…”

“…Various contributing factors have an impact on weight status and should therefore be considered when investigating the prevalence of overweight and obesity. The included studies in this review controlled for age [ 21 , 24 , 35 , 37 , 39 ], age and lesion severity [ 27 ], age and sex [ 10 , 17 , 18 , 20 , 23 , 28 , 31 , 33 , 36 , 38 , 40 , 41 , 43 , 44 ], race/ethnicity [ 29 , 45 ], family history, parent’s nutritional status [ 19 ], marital status, educational level, and geographic region [ 34 ]. Six studies did not take confounders into account and were therefore rated as “poor” [ 8 , 22 , 25 , 26 , 37 , 42 ].…”

“…In children with CHD, the prevalence of overweight ranged from 9.5% [ 36 ] to 31.5% [ 39 ] and the prevalence of obesity ranged from 9.5% [ 19 ] to 26.2% [ 36 ]. Studies comparing children with CHD to healthy controls reported similar overweight and obesity prevalence in both groups [ 18 , 20 , 21 , 24 , 33 , 35 , 40 , 41 , 45 ], whereby controls were age-matched [ 21 , 35 ], age and sex matched [ 20 ], and age, sex and race/ethnicity matched [ 45 ].…”

“…One study reported decreased BMI in CHD children [ 23 ], whereas another study reported increased obesity rates in CHD children compared to healthy controls [ 33 ]. CHD participants had a significantly greater waist circumference than controls when controlling for sex, birth weight, physical activity score, and total lean mass [ 20 ].…”