Obesity

Obesity affects the cardiovascular system

Obesity affects the cardiovascular system in multiple ways. Obese individuals have an increased total blood volume to meet the perfusion needs of the increased adipose tissue. Cardiac and stroke work indices remain normal in normotensive obese individuals. The increase in cardiac output is also accompanied by a decrease in systemic vascular resistance in normotensive obese individuals. Because of increased LV workload, oxygen consumption is also increased; the oxygen consumption increases linearly with the increase in body weight. On the whole, overweight and obesity predispose to or are associated with numerous cardiac complications such as coronary heart disease, heart failure.