• Br J Sports Med · Oct 2019

    Cardiovascular incidents in male professional football players with negative preparticipation cardiac screening results: an 8-year follow-up.

    • Hilde Moseby Berge, Thor Einar Andersen, and Roald Bahr.
    • Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center, Department of Sports Medicine, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway.
    • Br J Sports Med. 2019 Oct 1; 53 (20): 1279-1284.

    BackgroundPreparticipation cardiac screening of athletes aims to detect cardiovascular disease at an early stage to prevent sudden cardiac arrests and deaths. Few studies have described the cardiovascular outcomes in athletes classified as negative on screening.ObjectiveTo identify cardiovascular incidents in a cohort of male professional football players who were cleared to play after a negative screening result.MethodsThis is a retrospective 8-year follow-up study of 595 professional male football players in Norway who underwent preparticipation cardiac screening by experienced cardiologists, including electrocardiography (ECG) and echocardiography, in 2008. We performed a media search to identify sudden cardiovascular incidents between January 2008 and February 2016. Incidents were cross-checked with medical records.ResultsSix of the 595 players (1%), all classified as negative on cardiac screening, experienced severe cardiovascular incidents during follow-up. Retrospective review revealed abnormal ECG findings in one case, not recognised at the time of screening. Three players suffered a sudden cardiac arrest (all resuscitated successfully), one a myocardial infarction, one a transient ischaemic attack and one atrial flutter. Three of the players ignored chest pain, paresis, dyspnoea or near-syncope, two completed a match with symptoms before seeking medical assistance, one player's symptoms were misinterpreted and received inappropriate treatment initially, and two players were discharged from hospital without proper follow-up, despite having serious cardiovascular symptoms.ConclusionsA comprehensive preparticipation cardiac screening did not identify a subset of 6 of 595 players who experienced subsequent cardiovascular incidents as being at risk. It is important to remind athletes that a normal cardiac screening exam does not protect against all cardiac diseases. Timely reporting of symptoms is essential.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…