Screening for cardiovascular diseases difficult, but necessary

"Cardiovascular diseases are difficult to screen for, but the practice of doing so is critical to ensure safe athletic participation. This fact is emphasized by the recent deaths of three individuals in the Detroit Marathon on October 18th, 2009. The new study published in the November/December issue of Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach discusses the issues of cardiovascular screening. The study gives a comprehensive overview of the current guidelines and controversies surrounding cardiovascular screening of athletes. The screening challenges arise, the study notes, from trying to identify very rare and often clinically silent, but potentially fatal cardiac diseases in a large number of athletes competing at various levels. "Athletes are two and a half times as likely to experience Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) than nonathletes," explains study author Sharlene M. Day, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, and Director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Program at the University of Michigan. "This statistic should impress upon us the need for cardiovascular disease screening in our athletes. It is important to emphasize to athletes the importance of reporting symptoms that could reflect underlying heart disease."