índice de massa corporal como marcador de dislipidemia em crian？as

background: obesity is very frequently associated with conditions such as dyslipidemia e diabetes. objective: to verify the diagnostic value of the cut-off points proposed by the international obesity task force (iotf) and conde & monteiro (c&m) for the screening and identification of dyslipidemia in children between 10 and 12 years of age. methods: the body mass index (bmi) of 374 children of the school network of the city of santa maria-rs was ascertained. the children were selected in a stratified manner from a population of 4,083 children. lipid levels (reference standard) were determined by means of analysis of total cholesterol (tc), ldl-c, hdl-c and triglycerides (tg). the cut-off points of the iotf and c&m were used to classify the bmi. descriptive statistics and analysis of sensitivity and specificity were employed. results: there was a statistical difference in excess weight prevalence between both proposals (24.7% and 28.6% for iotf and c&m, respectively). a variation was observed in sensitivity (33% to 83%) and specificity (62% to 80%) between the cut-off points as to the detection of dyslipidemia. the percentage of false negatives was lower than the percentage of false positives. conclusion: the proposals may be used to screen elevated tc and ldl-c in male individuals. either the iotf or the c&m classification may be used to identify subjects without dyslipidemia, as these proposals presented high specificity.