European Heart Journal Advance Access originally published online on July 10, 2007
European Heart Journal 2007 28(16):1920-1922; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehm275
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© The European Society of Cardiology 2007. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Appropriate interpretation of the athlete's electrocardiogram saves lives as well as money
1 Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of Padova Medical School, Padova, Italy
2 The Heart Hospital, University College London, London, UK
* Corresponding author. Tel: +39 049 8212458; fax: +39 049 8212309. E-mail address: domenico.corrado@unipd.it
This editorial refers to ‘Prevalence of abnormal electrocardiograms in a large, unselected population undergoing pre-participation cardiovascular screening’ by A. Pelliccia et al., on page 2006
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Long-term Italian experience has provided evidence that systematic pre-participation screening, with 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) history and physical examination, is effective in identifying athletes with potentially lethal cardiovascular disease and actually saves lives.1,2 However, concerns have been raised about the cost-effectiveness of screening because of the high level of false-positive results from the ECG.3 This concern arises because (i) ECG changes develop in trained athletes as a consequence of sustained physical exercise (‘athlete's heart’); and (ii) there is the misconception that most athletes’ ECG changes overlap significantly with ECG abnormalities seen in the cardiovascular diseases which cause sudden death in the young.3–5 The ECG has therefore been considered to be a poor screening tool for cardiovascular disorders in athletes because of its presumed low specificity. This concept, however, was based on a few studies of small and selected series of highly trained athletes from a limited number of sports disciplines.5,6
Systematic
Drawing a line between physiological and potentially malignant ECG changes
Differential diagnosis between athlete's heart and cardiomyopathies
Does ECG screening of athletes work?
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EHJ 2007 28: 2006-2010.[Abstract] [FREE Full Text]
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