Effect of obesity on pediatric echocardiography Z scores

Measurements of heart and vessel size need to be adjusted on the children’s height and weight. In obese children, obesity may create an error in this adjustment, leading to under- or over-diagnosis. This project aims to improve adjustment for obese children to obtain more accurate diagnosis.

Z scores based on BSA may be underestimated in overweight patients. The objectives are to evaluate if excess weight causes underestimation of echocardiography Z scores in a large sample of pediatric echocardiography measurements and to develop and validate normalization methods that minimize the bias introduced by excess weight in pediatric quantitative echocardiography.

This project involves gathering cardiovascular 2D measurements from normal echocardiograms (screen-negative). The study team works with study sites to extract normal echo data from clinical datasets and/or to obtain already constituted normal echo data.

We expect to highlight the underestimation of cardiovascular measurement Z scores in obese children and to reduce interpretation errors and potential misguided diagnoses or interventions in this population.