COMPARISON OF FAT MASS PERCENTAGE MEASUREMENTS OBTAINED USING VARIOUS EQUATIONS AND BIOELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE ANALYSIS (BIA) DEVICES ON CADET-STUDENTS AT A MILITARY ACADEMY

Resumo

Bioimpedance is a well-established technique for the indirect estimation of body composition. However, despite its benefits, bioimpedance is not considered the reference technique for assessing fat mass (FM), and there are many different devices that don't always give the same values. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to assess and compare the FM% of Cadet-students at the Military Academy obtained with different equations and bioimpedance devices. This is a cross-sectional observational study with 25 healthy, non-athletic Caucasian male adults (mean age: 24.0 ± 2.1 years). Although the three devices used to assess body composition at the Military Academy differed significantly (One-way repeated measures ANOVA), they showed moderate to good relative reliability. Of all the devices analyzed, the Tanita BF-562 device obtained the best absolute agreement (ICC = 0.68) with the established benchmark. In conclusion, it is recommended that whatever BIA device is used in the future to assess the FM% of Cadets, it is essential to always use it over time to detect any changes or adjust the values through regression.