Introduction:

obesity is one of the main public health problems in the world. It is considered a trigger for multiple cardiometabolic diseases, such as acute myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes mellitus and ischemic stroke. This increase in fat infiltrates the heart, increasing epicardial adipose tissue (EAT), which ends up generating more inflammation and cardiac alterations.

Objective:

to study the role of epicardial adipose tissue (EAT), in the development of heart diseases and the best method for diagnosing this adipose tissue.

Materials and method:

we made a topic review, the result of a critical review of the available literature on epicardial adipose tissue (EAT), its functions and main diagnostic methods.

Conclusions:

a clear relationship was found between epicardial fat tissue (EAT) and inflammatory processes that generate alterations in cardiac function, developing pathologies such as atrial fibrillation and atheromatous coronary disease. At the moment we have several ways to measure it, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), tomography (TC), and echocardiography. The most accessible method is echocardiography as an appropriate and low-cost method, although the gold standards would be tomography and resonance, but due to their high cost they are not affordable.

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