What started the debate about the need for EKGs?
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May 11, 2017
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Dr. Sean Convery talks about the debate surrounding EKG testing for student athletes.
What started the debate about the need for EKGs?
The concerns raised about sudden cardiac death in athletes has been going on for a number of years, but now that we have more accurate data, we have more numbers, we have studies of athletes, people that have published studies dealing with thousands of athletes, looking at hundreds of sudden cardiac deaths in athletes, both in high school and college. Now we see that those numbers are troubling in certain populations, and the most troubling would be in the collegiate African American basketball player, that has the most risk for this sudden cardiac death.
Depending on what study you look at, 1-in-3000 athletic years to -5000 athletic years. That sounds like a lot of years, but it's not a lot of years when you look at how many people are playing. When you see numbers like that you realize that you have to do something, not only at that level, but at all the levels. So I think it's the: Now that we have more accurate reporting, now that we have databases that are on computers that can be easily shared, we can crunch all those numbers and say, "Hey, there's an issue here." Where before, it was just a few reports here and there, anecdotal evidence, no one really wanted to pull the trigger on that necessarily. But now I think some of the numbers are a little overwhelming.