The issue of screening professional and amateur athletes for heart defects that could lead to sudden cardiac arrest and result in the death of the athlete was highlighted in 2012 by the horrifying and quite frankly frightening live television coverage of the Fabrice Muamba incident in March of 2012.
Whilst playing in a football match live on national TV, Muamba collapsed and his heart stopped beating for a reported two hours. Screening procedures in the UK are completed voluntarily with the governing bodies and player unions of sports organising and funding screening procedures, unlike other European countries such as Italy where screening is government funded and is carried out on a more regular basis.
Such screenings aim to identify top athletes who appear to be healthy, but are more susceptible to heart problems through an undiagnosed medical condition and these screenings can prove vital in identifying issues that could save a sportspersons life. The New Scientist reports the most common form of cardiac abnormality to affect both professional and amateur athletes is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Around 35 per cent of those suffering exercise related cardiac problems are diagnosed with this problem, which can begin in the womb and sees abnormally large cells create an irregular heartbeat. Other problems that can often be identified by screening include Brugada Syndrome, which can limit the amount of blood supplied to the heart and result in cardiac arrest.
The UK's attitude to health screening differs from that taken by many other countries around the world. The most stringent rules surrounding screenings are found in Italy, where each professional or amateur athlete must be screened twice each year to ensure their health won’t be compromised while taking part in sporting activity.
In the UK, most sports people taking part in a sporting activity are screened for heart problems when they join a club as a young person, but then only required to be screened at the discretion of their club or association, according to the BBC. In Italy, the introduction of the cardiac screening laws in 1982 led to a reported 89 per cent drop in the death rate associated with exercise related cardiac problems from 1979 to 2004, The New Scientist reports, a statisic which cannot be ignored by UK sporting associations.
In the UK, the low numbers of people affected by a cardiac defect have often led to screening being described as not required, with only one in fifty-thousand affected the expense is often seen as too much for the numbers identified.
Screening is not always a perfect science, with many of those identified as having a cardiac problem diagnosed incorrectly, the NHS reports. In the case of Fabrice Muamba, the Professional Footballers Association reported the athlete was screened four times by them with a negative result each time before his collapse at the age of 23. The raising of awareness of screening has led to many professional sporting clubs and bodies reviewing their health screening procedures to ensure they are completed regularly to protect top athletes in the UK.
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