Medicine and science in sports and exercise
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Med Sci Sports Exerc · Sep 1997
Prospective screening of 5,615 high school athletes for risk of sudden cardiac death.
Sudden cardiac death among high school athletes is a very infrequent though tragic occurrence. Despite widespread preparticipation screening for known causes of this event, the frequency has not changed. The ECG is an acknowledged sensitive screening tool for the common causes of sudden cardiac death in young athletes. ⋯ Specificity was 97.8% for an abbreviated cardiac history and auscultation/inspection and 97.7% for ECG. Overall, the ECG was a much more effective screening tool than cardiac history and auscultation/inspection in detecting cardiovascular abnormalities requiring further tests before approval for participation in sports could be given. ECG and cardiovascular history/ausculation/inspection had similar specificity ECG was efficiently performed on large groups of high school athletes.