Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2020; 115(5): 971-972
Epicardial Adipose Tissue: A New Cardiovascular Imaging Parameter Deeply Connected with Cardiovascular Diseases
Eduardo Thadeu de Oliveira Correia
, Letícia Mara dos Santos Barbetta
Dear Editor,
We read with great interest the article entitled “The Relationship Between Epicardial Adipose Tissue and Insulin Resistance in Obese Children”. In that paper, the authors performed tissue doppler echocardiography to evaluate epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) thickness, electromechanical delay (EMD) and other standard measurements in 94 obese pediatric patients. Patients with Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) greater than the 90th percentile in an age and sex-specific percentile curve were labeled as having insulin resistance (IR). This study found that the group with IR had significant higher thickness of EAT than patients included without IR (7.15 vs. 5.5 mm, p<0.004, respectively) and inter and intra-atrial EMD was prolonged in the IR group compared to the non-IR group (p<0.010; p=0.032, respectively). Moreover, the authors found that a cut-off value for EAT of >3.85 mm could predict IR with 92.5% specificity and 68.5% sensitivity (p=0.002). The study then concluded that EAT could be used to identify IR among children, as it is stated that EAT is a cheap and accessible parameter that could be easily measured with echocardiography.
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