AIMS: Obesity is a global public health challenge, and the traditional WHO-proposed diagnostic criteria based on body mass index (BMI) often fail to fully assess related health risks. The European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) has proposed new criteria that combine BMI, waist-to-height ratio (WtHR) and complications to more accurately evaluate obesity-related health risks. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study utilized data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database, covering the years 1999-2018. The study validated the new EASO criteria for diagnosing obesity, defined as BMI ≥25 kg/m RESULTS: A total of 39 066 participants were included, with a mean age of 43.6 years
51.3% were male. Over a median follow-up period of 141 months, 3708 deaths were recorded. The prevalence of obesity was 63.04% according to the new EASO criteria. The obesity rate based on BMI ≥30 is only 35.55%. The EASO criteria achieved a C-index of 0.5549, which surpasses the predictive accuracy of the traditional BMI ≥30 kg/m CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the prognostic value of the new obesity diagnostic criteria proposed by EASO, suggesting that these criteria offer a more accurate assessment of obesity-related health risks.