Just in time for Thanksgiving! Dr. George Stukenborg, chief of patient outcomes in UVA’s Department of Public Health Sciences, recently co-authored a study of the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mortality risk. Stukenborg and his colleagues examined more than 180,000 surgery patients, of whom 3,000 or so died during the month following their operations. And, in a manner of speaking, their findings make a pretty strong case for second helpings of turkey and potatoes on Thursday.
Of those fatalities, patients in the lowest BMI category were 40 percent more likely to die than their peers in the middle BMI range. While Stukenborg and his colleagues stop short of suggesting why people with lower BMIs run a higher risk of fatality, they call body mass index "a significant predictor of mortality within 30 days of surgery." The study is available here.
Of course, history pop culture has also shown thin men to suffer from other ailments.
