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Reliability of bioelectrical impedance analyzers
Author(s) -
Hayes Ben,
Coronado Stefanie,
Latman Neal S.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.5.a832-d
Subject(s) - bioelectrical impedance analysis , reliability (semiconductor) , limits of agreement , medicine , statistics , fat mass , body weight , mathematics , body mass index , nuclear medicine , physics , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
Obesity is a major contributor to many preventable morbidities and mortalities. Concurrently, there is a minimal, essential amount of fat necessary for good health. Therefore, the accurate estimation of % body fat is critical. Bioelectrical impedance analyzers (BIAs) are used to estimate body composition. The purpose of this study was to determine the inter‐instrument reliability of 6 BIAs. The inter‐instrument reliability is the ability of different instruments to produce the same results. Three types of BIAs were tested: 3 measured upper body, 2 lower body, and 1 full body bioelectrical impedance. The % body fat was estimated on a sample of 51 subjects with each of the 6 test‐instruments. The sample was 58% male and ranged from 18 to 75 years of age. Body fat ranged from about 4 to 50% of body composition. The correlation coefficients (r) between test instruments ranged from 0.15 to 0.79 with a mean of 0.54. The r between BIAs was higher within than between types of BIAs. The r within the lower body types was 0.66 and within the upper body types was 0.57. In conclusion, it does not appear that there is a strong correlation between estimates of % body fat from the different Bioelectrical Impedance Analyzer test instruments in this study.