We’re excited to introduce our newest assessment: The Seca mBCA Body Composition test.

Tracking progress, setting achievable goals and monitoring meaningful changes over time is vital for a training that promotes health. Direct feedback about your body composition ensures success and reinforces your commitment Thus, reliable data and the ability to accurately assess members with medical expertise is key.

seca mBCA – Bringing medical values to fitness and wellness testing

The champion of accuracy

The assessment of each compartment (muscles, fat, water) demands precise and reliable technology. Below you will find the methods against which the seca mBCA was validated. Each of them represents the scientific gold standard. Since no other device has undergone such stringent validation, the seca mBCA provides the most accurate measurement results of any bioimpedance (BIA) device.

Whether a bioimpedance analysis delivers reliable and meaningful results depends on the actual reference method from which the analysis algorithms were derived.

Muscle mass

97% accuracy compared to a full-body MRI.

Fat mass

98% accuracy compared to the 4C Model

Total body water

98% accuracy compared to the D2O dilution method.

COMPREHENSIVE BODY COMPOSITION ANALYSIS

Fat Mass/Fat-Free Mass

• The medically precise distinction between fat mass and fat-free mass is important when weight changes occur. This is especially true for individuals who are overweight, obese or malnourished.

• The development of fat mass is thus valuable for weight management, in diabetology, hospital nutrition or general health

• A metabolic unhealthy person with insulin resistance, for example, nearly exclusively loses water when commencing with weight reduction treatments, which is why assessing fat mass individually is so essential to prevent misinterpretations

• Interpreting fat mass is also inevitable in malnourished individuals, which can be found in numerous medical fields such as oncology, cardiology, nephrology but also in psychology when it comes to anorexia nervosa or bulimia

• Another interesting area of application for assessing or monitoring fat mass is in the sports medicine field when it comes to determining the fitness level or controlling trainings.

Skeletal Muscle Mass

• The development and retention of skeletal muscle mass plays an important role in malnourished patients, in the area of sports medicine, and in the reduction of body weight. The display shows the individual values for each of the patients’ extremities as well as their torso

• Quantifying muscle mass is essential when monitoring weight changes in overweight and obese subjects

• It is essential that the majority of existing muscle mass is preserved when reducing weight in weight management settings, in diet programs in diabetology, cardiology and hospital nutrition in general

• Especially malnourished patients with sarcopenic and cachectic states - often found in oncology, cardiology, nephrology require an adequate amount of muscle mass to reduce morbidity and mortality. Sarcopenia and cachexia are also found in psychology when it comes to anorexia nervosa or bulimia

• Another interesting area of application for assessing or monitoring muscle mass is in the sports medicine field when it comes to determining the fitness level and controlling trainings, physiotherapies and rehabilitation.

Visceral Fat

• The higher the visceral fat value, the higher the risk of cardiometabolic illnesses. With the seca mBCA, negative trends can be detected early in order to initiate corresponding treatments and therapies

• The easy and quick assessment of visceral fat is an essential brick for estimating the cardiometabolic risk

• It has therefore become an established value especially overweight and obese patients

• The medical fields wanting to obtain visceral fat values are bariatrics, weight management, diabetology, hospital nutrition, cardiology and general health.

Total Body Water/Extracellular Water

• The medically precise assessment of total body water and extracellular water is essential in nephrology to better evaluate the dry weight

• The distribution of fluids detects edema which are often found in cardiology or other fields of internal medicine like pneumology or hepatorenal in nephrology patients, which mostly also require hospital nutrition aid

• In sports medicine the management of fluids is valuable for fluid management to prevent dehydration and maximize individual performance

• The determination of body water also helps to better understand weight loss situations in weight management, diabetes, cardiology or general health where great amounts of water are lost when commencing diets due to for example insulin resistances.

Bioelectrical Impedance Vector Analysis

• Bioelectrical Impedance Vector Analysis (BIVA) delivers information on the amount of body fluids water and phase angle (marker for cell metabolism) at the same time

• It therefore assists to evaluate the hydration status, which is valuable in sports medicine, but also may identify patients with fluid overloads, which are typically found in nephrology or cardiology

• On the other hand it delivers information on the nutritional status and has proven to be valuable in weight management, diabetology, oncology, but also in psychology when it comes to anorexia nervosa or bulimia

• In general health the BIVA readings allows to categorize patients and allows to draw hypothesizes, which can be verified with specific additional tests.

Phase Angle

• Phase angle correlates with the nutritional and functional (metabolic) status of individuals

• A sound nutritional state as well as a healthy metabolism result in a high phase angle value

• It has proven to show disease severity, especially in oncology, nephrology and cardiology and HIV

• Low phase angle results in apparently healthy, young individuals should be followed up by differentiated diagnosis (blood tests, etc.)

• This is important for general health during routine checkups, but also in sports medicine for the detection of exhaustive states

• As low phase angle values also correlate with malnutrition it is an important marker in psychology when it comes to anorexia nervosa or bulimia or in hospital nutrition in general.