„Völlig gesunder“ vielversprechender Fußballer, 13, starb plötzlich, nachdem er auf dem Spielfeld zusammengebrochen war

Cardio is risky for everyone, rip. Instead stick to weight training.

Really tragic that so many young people die of unexpected heart problems. There’s no easy way to catch them either, how often do young people get ECGs or chest CT scans? 

I don’t understand why an ECG screening test isn’t performed on all young people as standard. Instead it takes someone young dying for screening to be offered to families (and sometimes not even then).

So there’s a lot of misinformation on this thread that I’d like to clear up and maybe explain a few things. I’m a medical registrar (a medical doctor that’s been qualified too long and is paid woefully for the shit I deal with). So here’s a few things;

1) a blood test

Won’t show a thing. There’s very few cardiac abnormalities that will show up on a set of bloods. Even then, they’re transient things (such as certain electrolyte abnormalities) and would only be really useful in an acute setting where there’s a problem. Screening will do nothing.

2)CT scans

People love a CT. They are however ionising radiation and we do it if we need to. The threshold is lower in older people as the risk of developing cancer due to the scan is lower (time being the main thing because if it does cause cancer in a 80-90 year old, something else will likely be their final illness rather than the cancer caused by the scan. The risk is not insignificant. I deal with PEs(blood clots in the lungs) a lot. There’s a 13.6% increase risk in breast cancer if performed in a pregnant woman. CTPA along has a 1:1000-1:10000 risk of cancer. There’s no way in hell you’ll get a good doctor screening otherwise well people with this amount of radiation “just in case”.

3) ECGs

A tracing of the heart that is a snapshot. It can pick up some changes but in a lot of cases they’re again used for acute things. There are chronic changes we see in ECGs and given the low cost, they’re a good tool. They however are not going to solve the problem. What you really want is a movie, not a picture which is a convenient Segway to…

>Appropriate screening in potential athletes.

In my mind, and if either of my children wished to become athletes (I’d be genuinely upset if they wanted to be doctors) then I feel the only appropriate screen would be a holter (up to 72 hour long ECG traces) to see if there’s a paroxysmal (intermittent) arrhythmia and an echo (an ultrasound of the heart to assess its function and if there are changes that could lead to sudden cardiac death (things like HOCM). In an ideal world these could be done during onboarding in children scouted by clubs. The limiting factor like all things though is cost

I wonder if smart watches will become smart enough to provide early warnings of conditions like this? My 5 year old running watch logs my heart rate all the time, which I download later, and I wear it about 16 hours per day. That’s just using an LED shining into the blood vessels in my wrist. The individual measurements probably have little value, but as watches are worn for long periods of time perhaps worrying trends could be identified?

It might have changed in recent years but these types of arrhythmias were often mis- or undiagnosed. Growing up, I was a multi sport player who occasionally had my pulse jump above 200 bpm for minutes, even when not exercising.
Went to the doctor multiple times. Wore a monitor for weeks, got taken off of caffeine, told it was nothing that a doctor could pin down maybe 10 times.
By the time I was in my early 30s, just kind of accepted it. I was sitting at my desk at work one day and had an episode. Mentioned it to a coworker who felt my pulse, stood up and called her sister – a person who worked for a cardiologist in Long Beach, California. This doctor specialized in electrocardiography. Two weeks later I had a cardiac ablation to fix my WPW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_association_footballers_who_died_after_on-field_incidents

Interestingly, 2021 saw quite a spike.

Always funny seeing the new media trend, of “died suddenly” clickbait. They really trawl local obituaries etc too for complete non-stories

All the articles get a load of traffic, ad revenue must be killer