Reproductive healthLecture
Overweight, obesity and reproductive outcomes
The impact of overweight and obesity on reproductive outcomes: ovarian response, embryo quality, endometrial receptivity and obstetric consequences. Why BMI alone is insufficient for clinical decisions — and how body composition assessment (bioelectrical impedance, indirect calorimetry, food diary) makes pre-cycle workup truly individualized.
Audio: MultiSubtitles: EN · UA · RU32 min
Christophe Blockeel
Professor, MD, PhD
Reproductive endocrinologist and gynecologist, and Medical Director of Brussels IVF — the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at University Hospital Brussels (UZ Brussel). Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and visiting professor at the University of Zagreb, with more than 20 years in reproductive medicine. His work focuses on ovarian stimulation, embryo transfer and assisted reproductive technologies, with more than 300 scientific publications.
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Body mass index has remained the default counselling tool in fertility clinics for decades — but it is increasingly clear that BMI conceals more clinical information than it reveals. The lecture argues for replacing it with body composition assessment as the new standard for pre-cycle workup, and for treating overweight, obesity and underweight as fundamentally different metabolic phenotypes.
BMI as an outdated criterion
Two patients with identical BMI can have fundamentally different fertility prospects. The same BMI can reflect normal composition in a constitutionally lean patient, high muscle mass in an athlete, or low fat-free mass in a malnourished patient. Using BMI as the sole criterion conflates these into a single category — losing the clinically relevant information.
