Research on Body Fat Measurement for Spinal Cord Injury Patients

− 1^st Report: Effect of Body Posture on Percent Body Fat −

Abstract

   Spinal cord injury patients are easy to become the obesity because of insufficient movement. The ratio of the obesity complication of the spinal cord injury person is bigger than that of the healthy subject. Therefore the importance of body fat measurement of the spinal cord injury patient is very high for their health maintenances. The body fat measuring instrument is available on the home as an index to physical fitness and health care reinforcement. Portable body fat measuring instrument with bioelectrical impedance method is used for spinal cord injury patient in the hospital from the viewpoint of obesity prevention. However, the discrepancy of percent fat mass result is reported between bioelectrical impedance method and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. In this paper, it was found that the body posture greatly affect the percent body fat of the spinal cord injury patients. Moreover, estimating method of percent fat mass is proposed for spinal cord injury patient.