The relationship between body composition measurements and blood pressure in adults referring to the obesity policy clinic

The study aimed to explore the relationship between body composition and blood pressure in obesity clinic patients. Data from retrospective records included initial blood pressure, sociodemographic factors, diseases, medication use, manual anthropometric measurements, and body composition measurements using the Inbody 270 bioimpedance device.Calculations were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 22, a ready-made statistical software from SPSS Inc., an IBM Co., Somers, NY. p-values lower than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. The study included 548 obese patients, with 84.3% being women. In our study, 59.3% of the patients had a chronic disease. The group of patients with hypertension was defined as those with a diagnosis of hypertension and blood pressure ≥140/90. Hypertension was present in 28.3% of the patients.When examining factors related to blood pressure classification, there was a statistically significant difference between sociodemographic factors such as marital status, the presence of a chronic disease, and a family history of hypertension and the classification of blood pressure. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences between the classification of blood pressure and both the results obtained from bioimpedance measurements and other anthropometric measurements, except for height. In regression analyses that excluded patients with hypertension, hip circumference and lean body mass significantly predicted systolic blood pressure; additionally, total body water, lean mass, and basal metabolic rate significantly predicted diastolic blood pressure. Body mass index is often used in the assessment of obesity. However, anthropometric measurements such as waist circumference and bioimpedance measurements also provide valuable results about patients. In our study, we found that some of the results obtained through bioimpedance measurement predicted systolic and diastolic blood pressure. In this context, with the increasing prevalence of obesity centers, we believe that the application of these measurements to patients will contribute to the literature. Keywords: obesity, body composition measurements, blood pressure