The American journal of physiology
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Comparative Study
Fallacy of indexing renal and systemic hemodynamic measurements for body surface area.
Renal plasma flow, glomerular filtration rate, and cardiac output are traditionally indexed for body surface area by expressing these traits as per-surface-area ratios. Indexing is intended to remove interindividual variation attributable to differences in body size. Regression is an alternative method commonly used to adjust other biological traits for the effects of a covariate, such as body surface area. ⋯ Moreover, indexing obscured differences in mean renal plasma flow between females and males and created differences in mean cardiac output between the genders. In contrast, the regression method consistently eliminated dependencies of each trait on body surface area and did not lead to inappropriate inferences about mean differences in these traits between females and males. We conclude that the indexing method of adjusting renal plasma flow, glomerular filtration rate, and cardiac output for interindividual differences in body surface area should be abandoned and replaced by use of the regression method.