A recent Consensus of the Washington Medical Institute point that one of the main problems in Mental Health is the lack of integrated medical services in Psychiatry Departments, associated to the poor communication between general doctors and psychiatrists. At the same time, a lot of studies have showed high morbidity and mortality related to medical conditions (such as cardiovascular diseases), in some psychiatry patients, like those with Schizophrenia.

So, it would be worthwhile that all individuals with Schizophrenia were medically evaluated, in a frequent way, for the early detection and control of cardiovascular risk factors. This evaluation can be done with blood tests, but there are some anthropometrics measures that can be used like screening methods, namely the Corporal Mass Index and the Abdominal Circumference.

The authors refer to recent guidelines related to these recommendations, and review some studies that compare these two anthropometric measures in their capacity to predict the existence of cardiovascular risk factors in patients with Schizophrenia.