O volume do baço aferido através da ressonância magnética em adolescentes com sobrepeso e obesos é maior do que em eutróficos

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate the volume of the spleen in eutrophic and obese adolescents through MR and to compare it between the two groups. Secondarily, these measurements were correlated with the age, sex, weight, BMI and height of the patients in each group. Material and Methods: a cross-sectional, observational study, part of an umbrella project, performed during January and February 2015 in a tertiary hospital. The following were measured: the maximum width (W) and thickness (T) of the spleen in the T1 axial sequence and the maximum longitudinal diameter (LD) in the T2 coronal sequence from MR exams of the upper abdomen performed on 50 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18. The adolescents were divided into two groups: eutrophic subjects (BMI<25) and overweight/obese subjects (BMI ≥25). We calculated the volume of each patient’s organ through the conventional formula to calculate the volume of an elongated ellipsoid (0.524 x W x T x LD). Anthropometric data (weight, BMI, height and age) were obtained from the umbrella project’s database. We used Pearson or Spearman correlation coefficients to correlate the quantitative variables with each other and Student’s t-test to compare the averages for independent samples. Results: Twenty-six patients (52.0%) were male; the average age was 16.7 years old, and standard deviation was 0.8 years; 31 patients (82.0%) had a BMI<25 (eutrophic) and 19 (38%) had a BMI≥25 (overweight/obese). There was a statistically significant difference between the groups for the spleen’s width (p=0.008) and volume (p=0.020), which were larger in the overweight/obese group. For the eutrophic group, the averages for the maximum width (p=0.016), for the maximum longitudinal diameter (p <0.001) and for the volume of the spleen (p=0,001) were higher in the males than in the females in a statistically significant way. There was no statistically significant difference in the measurements between the sexes for the overweight/obese group. Height showed a stronger correlation than weight with the volume, maximum width and maximum longitudinal diameter of the spleen in the eutrophic group and a correlation of the same intensity with weight for all the measurements of the spleen in the overweight/obese group. Conclusion: This study suggests that the volume of the spleen as determined by MR is greater in overweight or obese adolescents than it is in eutrophic adolescents. More research is needed to evaluate the reproducibility of our results on the rest of the adolescent population, given the narrow age band used for our study.