<![CDATA[Background : Obesity is a worldwide complicated health problem. It is connected with an amplifiedcardiovascular mortality and morbidity result from obesity itself on one hand and concomitant with othermedical conditions like (diabetes , hypertension, , sleep apnea syndrome, insulin resistance) on other hand.obesity result in multiple functional and structural cardiac changes which may cause heart failure, thesechanges detected by developed cardiac imaging methods, one of these methods is Echocardiography whichis simple, accurate, non-invasive, sensitive diagnostic tool for evaluation of important cardiac changesrelated to obesity .Objectives: The study is aimed to determine the consequences of obesity on echocardiographic value forepicardial fat thickness in adult and middle age Iraqi persons .Patients and Method: The study was a case-control, based on a non- randomized selected samples fromboth gender from Basrah city, carried out on 150 subjects aged 20-55 years, persons were grouped accordingto body mass index to: 1- 50 obese (no history of cardiovascular disease) (BMI?30kg/m2) , 2- 50 obesehaving ischemic heart disease (BMI?30kg/m2) , 50 control apparently healthy (BMI 18.5-24.9) Iraqisubjects all persons underwent transthoracic echocardiography to measure the epicardial fat thickness, thisvalue was stated as mean and standard error. This study was done between December 2018 till April 2019 atthe Echocardiography Unit in Basrah Teaching Hospital .Results: There was a significant increase in epicardial fat thickness in addition to some anthropometricindices among obese subjects as compared to control group , but waist / thigh, waist/hip and conicity indexlooked unchanged significantly.Conclusion: Obesity is positively interconnected with increase in epicardial fat thickness in addition tosome anthropometric indices that support obesity and can predict cardiovascular risks .]]>
