A new research has found that undetected heart disease and not sports is responsible for sudden cardiac arrests in young and fit people.
The reports of a young, healthy and fit athlete’s sudden collapse and death due to cardiac arrest in the field are very common. And rigorous physical activity was blamed for this tragedy. But Andrew Krahn of the University of British Columbia, Canada, seeks to dismiss the myth.
"Our research gives us an idea of the scope of the problem - there are almost 200 young people who die suddenly every year in Ontario. A good proportion of them have unrecognized heart disease. So the question is: How can we catch this before it happens," Krahn has been quoted as saying.
Krahn said that more attention should be given to possible warning signs such as fainting. He says that teachers, coaches and an aware public may be instrumental in detecting risk that can ensure prevention and formal medical evaluation and therapy.
"I would advocate for careful screening of people who faint, using questionnaires and education of healthcare professionals so that when warning signs present themselves, they recognize them and this information gets passed on to the right people," he comments.
Reviewing coroners' reports, Krahn and his team observed that there were 174 cases of presumed sudden death in Ontario in 2008 in people aged two to 40 years. 126 of these cases were of heart disease (72 percent) - 78 percent of which was undetected.
Most of the victims were male (76 percent) between 18 and 40 years of age (90 percent), says a British Columbia statement.
Only 33 percent of cases involving children/adolescents and just nine percent of cases in adults occurred while they were doing moderate or vigorous exercise.
"Put it this way: If you have a 13-year-old kid who is not the star athlete and dies at home watching TV, it doesn't make the news," said Krahn. "But if the same kid is a high school quarterback or hockey star, then it's covered."
Beth Abramson, a Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher says that there are other measures that should be taken to save lives that include training in CPR and the placement of Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) in schools, arenas and gyms..
The findings of this research were presented at the 2012 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Ontario, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
--with inputs from IANS
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