General Article URMC study shows obesity diagnosis is often overlooked

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Failure to identify obesity results in missed opportunity to intervene.

Despite a growing epidemic, many medical providers fail to diagnose obesity in their patients and miss an opportunity to identify an important component of long-term health, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the Journal of Community Health.

Among patients whose body mass index (BMI) indicated obesity, providers diagnosed and documented obesity in less than a quarter of office visits with children, and less than half for adolescents and adults, researchers found. The study further found that patients living in less-educated communities were even less likely to receive an accurate diagnosis.

“As a medical community, we can’t effectively manage obesity until we are identifying it properly in our patients,” said Robert J Fortuna, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of Medicine and Pediatrics in Primary Care at URMC and one of the study’s authors. “By not accurately diagnosing obe...

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