The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is producing a one-day program in conjunction with the Saudi Heart Association (SHA) at its annual meeting in Riyadh on 21-24 February.
This is part of an effort by ESC to extend its scientific activities beyond Europe and by SHA to develop programs to increase awareness of heart disease and develop prevention programs.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that up to 60% of men and up to 70% of women are overweight in Arab countries. WHO also reports that about 25% of the population has diabetes and hypertension.
Cigarette smoking and use of the waterpipe, or hookah, also are increasing the risk of heart disease. The SHA estimates that up to 34% of Middle Eastern adolescents are using the hookah. A study conducted by the Gulf Registry of Acute Coronary Events of 6,700 acute coronary patients from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen found that waterpipe smokers were older than cigarette smokers and were more likely to be female. A single waterpipe use might produce about 50,000 mL of smoke, compared with a cigarette producing 500-600 mL of smoke.
![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
