According to Italian specialists, an electrocardiogram of the heart should prevent cases of sudden death during exercise, which still occur among athletes, reports the British Medical Journal.
Antonio Pelliccia and Domenico Corrado say that testing that can detect silent heart disease could save athletes’ lives. Italy is the only country where ECG testing for athletes is mandatory, and has been screening for 30 years.
With the introduction of mandatory testing, the death rate from sudden death in athletes was down 89 percent.
The view of the Italians is opposed by Dr. Roald Bahr, who points out that the diagnostic value of the ECG is not very high – false positive results reach 40 percent, and for example, calcifications in the coronary arteries remain undetected. Besides, in Italy, the causes of sudden death of athletes are different than in other countries. Screening of the hundreds of thousands of athletes who save maybe one person a year is not justifiable, Bahr concludes. (PAP)