EDITORIAL The obesity paradox: weighing the benefit

This editorial refers to ‘Obesity paradox in a cohort of 4880 consecutive patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention’†, by C.E. Hastie et al. on page 222 Obesity has become a medical and socioeconomic burden of epi-demic proportions and the World Health Organization (WHO) has marked obesity as one of the most blatantly visible but most neglected public health problems. Indeed, being overweight is an established risk factor for the development of many different diseases including cardiovascular, metabolic, and orthopaedic illnesses. In contrast, obesity has not been associated with a worse outcome in all patient populations. In fact, substantial data have accumulated suggesting a survival benefit in patients with existing chronic cardiovascular diseases for patients who are overweight and moderately obese. In chronic heart failure (CHF), convincin