The Daily Campus

Issue date: 11/1/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Julie Friedlander If a law in Italy hat requires athletes to take electrocardiograms was ever passed in the United States, every individual playing a sport, including the football team, would need to be tested.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggests that testing athletes' hearts can decrease the risk of sudden cardiac death by as much as 89 percent. But not all experts agree that requiring testing in the United States would have similar results.

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Padua Medical School in Italy. The Italian researchers analyzed trends in sudden death from heart problems over the course of 25 years among both athletes and non-athletes between the ages of 12 to 35 in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy.

Beginning in 1982, Italy has required by law that all athletes take electrocardiograms (ECGs) to test for hidden heart conditions before participating in competitive sports. The law results in about 2 percent of athletes being disqualified from participation.

In the U.S., sudden cardiac arrest accounts for 20 to 25 sports-related deaths among high school and college students each year, according to data collected by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. It is also the leading cause of death in athletic programs in the U.S.

But experts such as Dr. Paul Thompson, director of Cardiology at Hartford Hospital and a professor at the University of Connecticut, caution the expectation that requiring preparticipation screening of athletes in the U.S. would produce the same effects. Thompson, whose research is funded by the Hartford Hospital, co-authored an editorial that accompanied the Italian study in JAMA that raised questions about the study and its conclusions.

According to Thompson, the Italian study compared the sudden cardiac death rates of athletes to those of non-athletes in the same community.

"But the community was not screened as the athletes were," Thompson said. "When the death rate did not go down in the community around Padua, but it did in the athletes, the Italian researchers attributed it to the screening program. But it could also be a number of other things, such as the community becoming more aware of the risk and limiting a little more who they allow to participate."

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