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Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”

Catastrophic events, be it traffic accidents, natural disasters or homicides, always lead to scrutiny. Could we have seen the event coming and could it have been prevented? In the case of a sudden cardiac arrest of a seemingly healthy athlete the public outcry is not any different. Despite an intrin...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Mosterd, A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Bohn Stafleu van Loghum 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5818374/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29392520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12471-018-1075-7
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author Mosterd, A.
author_facet Mosterd, A.
author_sort Mosterd, A.
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description Catastrophic events, be it traffic accidents, natural disasters or homicides, always lead to scrutiny. Could we have seen the event coming and could it have been prevented? In the case of a sudden cardiac arrest of a seemingly healthy athlete the public outcry is not any different. Despite an intrinsic appeal for screening to prevent similar events, there is no evidence that justifies routine cardiovascular pre-participation screening of athletes. On balance, cardiovascular screening in athletes will most likely do more harm than good. Fatal exercise-related cardiac arrests do not occur very often. The true diagnostic yield of the pre-participation evaluation is not known and once a cardiac condition has been identified, the most appropriate intervention is often unclear. It follows that pre-participation screening of large groups of athletes without known cardiac disease will inevitably result in many false positive findings, while at the same time providing a false sense of security to those screened negative. Except for compelling reasons (e. g. cascade screening, research settings, professional athletes), physicians should not engage in routine examination of asymptomatic athletes to prevent cardiac events.
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spelling pubmed-58183742018-02-26 Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff” Mosterd, A. Neth Heart J Point of View Catastrophic events, be it traffic accidents, natural disasters or homicides, always lead to scrutiny. Could we have seen the event coming and could it have been prevented? In the case of a sudden cardiac arrest of a seemingly healthy athlete the public outcry is not any different. Despite an intrinsic appeal for screening to prevent similar events, there is no evidence that justifies routine cardiovascular pre-participation screening of athletes. On balance, cardiovascular screening in athletes will most likely do more harm than good. Fatal exercise-related cardiac arrests do not occur very often. The true diagnostic yield of the pre-participation evaluation is not known and once a cardiac condition has been identified, the most appropriate intervention is often unclear. It follows that pre-participation screening of large groups of athletes without known cardiac disease will inevitably result in many false positive findings, while at the same time providing a false sense of security to those screened negative. Except for compelling reasons (e. g. cascade screening, research settings, professional athletes), physicians should not engage in routine examination of asymptomatic athletes to prevent cardiac events. Bohn Stafleu van Loghum 2018-02-01 2018-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5818374/ /pubmed/29392520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12471-018-1075-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Point of View
Mosterd, A.
Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title_full Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title_fullStr Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title_full_unstemmed Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title_short Pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “Don’t do stupid stuff”
title_sort pre-participation screening of asymptomatic athletes: “don’t do stupid stuff”
topic Point of View
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5818374/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29392520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12471-018-1075-7
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