Abstract

NASCIMENTO, Marcelo de Maio; PEREIRA, Luiz Gabriel Dantas; CORDEIRO, Phillipe Ramon Nogueira  and  ARAUJO, Luciana Márcia Gomes de. Comparison and agreement of criteria for the BMI classification of physically active elderly women living in the Backlands, semi-arid Region. J. Hum. Growth Dev. [online]. 2017, vol.27, n.3, pp. 342-349. ISSN 0104-1282.  http://dx.doi.org/10.7322/jhgd.128227.

INTRODUCTION: The study of the nutritional status of the elderly merits attention, since there is no consensus regarding the criteria for the evaluation of the Body Mass Index (BMI) of this population. OBJECTIVE: The evaluation of the nutritional status of elderly women practicing regular physical exercise, as well as the comparison of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Lipschitz criteria for the identification of health risks in order to examine their agreement. METHOD: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with the participation of 76 elderly women taking part in physical exercise groups in Petrolina-PE. The nutritional status was obtained by the calculation of BMI, according to the WHO and Lipschitz criteria. The Variance analysis (ANOVA) was used to compare the variables, followed by Tukey's post hoc. The Kappa statistic established an agreement between the two BMI criteria and the Spearman coefficient determined a correlation between BMI and waist circumference (WC). RESULTS: Elderly women aged 60-79 years old were classified as being overweight by WHO and eutrophic by Lipschitz. Participants 80-89 years old demonstrated eutrophy, according to the Lipschitz criteria, while the WHO criteria diverged for this group between thinness and eutrophy. There was weak agreement between both the criteria, Kappa (0.232, p = 0.002) and a strong correlation between BMI and WC (r = 0.722, p <0.001). CONCLUSION: A divergence between the WHO and Lipschitz criteria was found. The WHO criteria proved to be more sensitive for identifying overweight and obesity, while the Lipschitz criteria were more sensitive for identifying normal weight and malnutrition. The WC measure was more accurate for detecting health risks, especially in elderly eutrophic women.

Keywords : elderly; BMI; waist circumference; obesity.

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