Classification of Obesity with Respect to Morbidity

Obesity is defined as an excess accumulation of adipose tissue in the body. Since its etiology and pathogenesis are quite heterogenous, classification of disease types by specific purposes is essential for proper clinical management. Although classification by the etiology given in Table I is useful for diagnosing the primary disease inducing obesity, it would be more meaningful to classify simple obesity into subgroups and determine pathological features of each disease type, since simple obesities without specific identifiable cause are much more often encountered in daily medical care.From this viewpoint, classification by morphological types of fat cells or by sites of adipose tissue accumulation has been carried out as shown in Parts II and III of Table I, and features of each disease type have been reviewed. This paper explains the above in detail, and describes a method of classification that incorporates the concept of visceral fats in comparison with conventional methods. As for the accumulation ...