EOSS Sparks Interest in Asia

Asan Medical Centre, Seoul

Yesterday morning, I had the pleasure of presenting the Plenary Key Note Lecture at the 31st Annual Scientific Conference of the Korean Society for the Study of Obesity (KSSO).

The session was chaired by Professors Kwang-Won Kim (President) and Hye-Soon Park (Chair, Board of Directors) of KSSO at the most impressive Asan Medical Centre, a sprawling ~2500-bed hospital complex, one of the largest and most modern of Korean academic hospitals. The hospital is named after Asan, Chung Ju-Yung, the founder of Hyundai and the Asan Foundation.

While my talk focused on an etiological approach to obesity management (soon to be published in Obesity Reviews), I also spoke about the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS) and our early experience with this system in clinical practice. My Korean colleagues found this system most interesting and timely, as the issue of which obese people to prioritize for treatment is as relevant in Korea as it is in Canada.

While Korea, as do other Asian countries, defines obesity as a BMI greater than 25, this should not pose a barrier to applying EOSS to their population. Indeed, the advantage of EOSS is that it characterizes the degree of obesity not simply by size but rather based on the clinical assessment of mental and physical comorbidities.

I am most grateful to my Korean colleagues for the invitation and their incredibile hospitality and very much look forward to hearing about how they plan to adopt EOSS for Koreans.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta