Researchers call for more comprehensive way to indicate an obesity diagnosis in health systems

Insurance companies and health providers use codes to represent diagnoses, and researchers are calling for a new system for coding obesity such that it goes beyond just BMI. Previous work has introduced "adiposity-based chronic disease" as a new diagnostic term for obesity so that it's clear it's a chronic disease, and a new paper outlines a classification system based on ABCD. The proposal incorporates the ways in which physical processes have gone awry to lead to ABCD; BMI score; complications the patient may be experiencing; and the severity of these complications. And like with other diseases, the new system would also give stage-based classifications for those with a diagnosis. "A more scientifically correct and medically actionable approach to diagnosis," the authors write, could lead to wider acknowledgement of ABCD as a disease and help patients better access therapies.