HOME
Return to Table of Contents
DOES GASTRIC WALL THICKNESS CHANGE WITH BODY MASS INDEX?
M Larsen1, BM Yan2, J Morton3, J Van Dam2
1Department of Medicine, 2Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and 3Department of Surgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: It is a commonly held belief that morbidly obese patients have a thicker gastric wall than patients with a normal body mass index (BMI). The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between gastric wall thickness and BMI.
METHODS: Bariatric surgery patients scheduled to undergo a pre-operative screening EGD (obese) and patients undergoing endoscopic ultrasound for non-gastric pathology (control) were prospectively enrolled in the study. All patients underwent radial endoscopic ultrasound evaluation with measurements of gastric wall thickness at six predetermined areas of the stomach. The primary outcome was the correlation of body mass index and mean gastric wall thickness.
RESULTS: A total of 24 patients were enrolled in the study. Eight patients were excluded due to endoscopic abnormalities of the stomach (5) or intolerance to the procedure (3). Ten control patients and 6 obese patients were included in the analysis. BMI in the control group was 23.8 ± 2.5 kg/m2 compared to 53.3 ± 13.5 kg/m2 in the obese population. Overall, the average gastric wall thickness amongst all subjects was 3.27 ± 0.42mm. Mean gastric thickness in the control group was 3.25 ± 0.45mm compared to 3.30 ± 0.39mm in the obese group (p = 0.41). When both groups were combined, there did not appear to be a linear relationship between overall mean thickness and BMI (R2 = 0.005). There was no linear relationship between gastric wall thickness and waist circumference (R2 = 0.02). There was no significant difference in thickness between the two study groups at any of the different locations of the stomach measured, and no significant difference in thickness was found between different anatomical locations of the stomach.
CONCLUSION: There was no significant correlation between gastric wall thickness and BMI. Mean gastric wall thickness of endoscopically normal stomachs was in the range of 3-4 mm.