Severe Obesity in Adolescents and Young Adults Is Associated With Subclinical Cardiac and Vascular Changes.

Context: Severe obesity is the fastest growing subgroup of obesity in youth.

Objective: We sought to explore the association between severe obesity and subclinical measures of cardiac and vascular structure and function in adolescents and young adults.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a cross-sectional comparison of 265 adolescents and young adults with severe obesity (defined as body mass index [BMI] ≥120% of the 95th percentile) to 182 adolescents and young adults with obesity (defined as BMI ≥100-119th of the 95th percentile) at tertiary medical center.