Dr. Stasia Hadjiyannakis and Dr. Annick Buchholz are authors on a paper, “The Edmonton Obesity Staging System for Paediatrics: A proposed clinical staging system for paediatric obesity,” that was recently published in Paediatrics & Child Health. Citation details and a summary of the paper are below.

S Hadjiyannakis, A Buchholz, J-P Chanoine, MM Jetha, L Gaboury, J Hamilton, C Birken, KM Morrison, L Legault, T Bridger, SR Cook, J Lyons, AM Sharma, GDC Ball. The Edmonton Obesity Staging System for Paediatrics: A proposed clinical staging system for paediatric obesity. Paediatr Child Health. 2016;21(1):21-26.

ABSTRACT: Traditionally, clinical recommendations for assessing and managing paediatric obesity have relied on anthropometric measures, such as body mass index (BMI), BMI percentile and/or BMI z-score, to monitor health risks and determine weight management success. However, anthropometric measures do not always accurately and reliably identify children and youth with obesity-related health risks or comorbidities. The authors propose a new clinical staging system (the Edmonton Obesity Staging System for Pediatrics, EOSS-P), adapted from the adult-oriented EOSS. The EOSS-P is used to stratify patients according to severity of obesity-related comorbidities and barriers to weight management into four graded categories (0 to 3) within four main health domains: metabolic, mechanical, mental health and social milieu (the 4Ms). The EOSS-P is based on common clinical assessments that are widely available and routinely completed by clinicians, and has the potential to provide clinical and prognostic information to help evaluate and inform the management of paediatric obesity.