Abstract
The excessive deposition of visceral fat is known to be one of the risk factors for various disorders such as prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, in addition to other lifestyle-related disorders. The measurement of visceral fat accumulation should be performed by computed tomography. However, computed tomography is not always practical in mass screenings because of issues such as cost, possible irradiation hazard, and extra effort. In contrast, abdominal ultrasonography is a widely accepted screening technique for mass health checks in Japan. Therefore, we attempted to find an ultrasonographic parameter which could easily predict visceral fat accumulation. A total of 505 individuals (M:F = 275:230, age = 55.2 ± 19.0) were analyzed in this study. Our data indicated that the distance between the body surface and the pancreas, measured ultrasonographically, had a significant correlation with the body mass index and the amount of visceral fat accumulation in both sexes (P < 0.0001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the distance between the body surface and the pancreas used to predict a visceral fat accumulation of 100 square centimeters or more yielded 0.906 in males, 0.815 in females, and 0.876 in both sexes together. The most appropriate cut-off value of the distance between the body surface and the pancreas was 5.5 centimeters in both sexes when we applied the receiver operating characteristic curve. The cut-off values gave 70.6% sensitivity, 85.7% specificity, 64.9% positive predictive value and 86.8% negative predictive value in males, and 57.1% sensitivity, 86.5% specificity, 44.4% positive predictive value and 91.4% negative predictive value in females. In conclusion, in the mass health check using ultrasonography, the distance between the body surface and the pancreas can be easily used to estimate visceral fat accumulations of 100 square centimeters or more, especially in males.
