Excellent Intra and Inter-Observer Reproducibility of Wrist Circumference Measurements in Obese Children and Adolescents

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 6; p. e0156646
• Main Authors: Campagna, Giuseppe, Zampetti, Simona, Gallozzi, Alessia, Giansanti, Sara, Chiesa, Claudio, Pacifico, Lucia, Buzzetti, Raffaella
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 13.06.2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescent obesity; Adolescents; Age; Analysis; Biology and Life Sciences; Body fat; Body mass index; Body measurements; Body weight; Body Weights and Measures - standards; Body Weights and Measures - statistics & numerical data; Cardiovascular diseases; Child; Child, Preschool; Children; Circumferences; Complications and side effects; Correlation; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Diabetes; Female; Health aspects; Homeostasis; Hospitals; Humans; Insulin; Insulin resistance; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Metabolic syndrome; Neck; Obesity; Observer Variation; Operators; Overweight; Pediatric Obesity - diagnosis; Pediatric Obesity - pathology; People and Places; Population; Population (statistical); Reliability; Reproducibility; Reproducibility of Results; Research and Analysis Methods; Risk factors; Social Sciences; Statistical analysis; Studies; Teenagers; Variability; Waist Circumference; Wrist; Wrist - growth & development; Wrist - pathology; Italy
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156646

In a previous study, we found that wrist circumference, in particular its bone component, was associated with insulin resistance in a population of overweight/obese children. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the intra- and inter-operator variability in wrist circumference measurement in a population of obese children and adolescents. One hundred and two (54 male and 48 female) obese children and adolescents were consecutively enrolled. In all subjects wrist circumferences were measured by two different operators two times to assess intra- and inter-operator variability. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS v.9.4 and JMP v.12. Measurements of wrist circumference showed excellent inter-operator reliability with Intra class Correlation Coefficients (ICC) of 0.96 and ICC of 0.97 for the first and the second measurement, respectively. The intra-operator reliability was, also, very strong with a Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC) of 0.98 for both operators. The high reproducibility demonstrated in our results suggests that wrist circumference measurement, being safe, non-invasive and repeatable can be easily used in out-patient settings to identify youths with increased risk of insulin-resistance. This can avoid testing the entire population of overweight/obese children for insulin resistance parameters.