The role of anthropometry in preventive medicine

Anthropometry, as static and dynamic quantitative anatomy, is involved in several bio-medical areas like auxology, senescence, sport activity and preventive medicine. The commonest application of anthropometry in prevention is aimed to monitoring the health status and the obesity in the population and in the single subject. To this purpose, the World Health Organization (WHO) studied the anthropometric values in several countries, suggesting recommendations and guidelines for methodological standardization. Although WHR and BMI are the commonest indices used to assess health status and to prevent obesity, they are not informative about body composition, for which more sophisticated methodologies are required. Today anthropometry is the key discipline for the quantitative definition of health determinants, their longitudinal follow-up and for physical exercise prescription: in other words, for prevention, as witnessed by the exponentially growing number of scientific publications during the last decade.