Accurate assessment of body composition is essential in epidemiology for classifying
obesity levels and in clinical medicine for assessing treatment outcomes.
Hydrostatic weighing is considered the ‘gold standard’ for assessing the level of
adiposity; however, in a morbidly obese population more than 25% cannot perform
the necessary facial immersion. We previously validated a procedure for hydrostatic
weighing without head submersion (HWNS) in morbidly obese females [ 11.
The purpose of this study was to compare the previously validated procedure to
another HWNS method using anthropometric head measures to correct for the head
volume during HWNS in morbidly obese females.