Hey guys! Sorry it's been a while. I was on vacation in Charleston, SC with one of my best friends and I did not get to post last week! We had a blast, if you were interested. Charleston is definitely somewhere you should visit if you have the time!
So I have been reading multiple articles about the use of AEDs lately. A little over a month ago, a volleyball player collapsed on the court during a game and an AED was used. Friday, a track athlete collapsed on the track and an AED was used. Both suffered from cardiac arrest. A 2001 study in the Journal of Athletic Training states that cardiac arrest in athletics is rare and most athletes do not have symptoms before it happens. It is usually non-traumatic and non-violent and causes death within one hour of the attack. The National Federation of High School Associations estimated (2001 and before) about 10-25 cases of sudden cardiac death per year in people under 30. From 1985-1995, the mean age of youth that had died from sudden cardiac arrest was 17; 90% of the total number of athletes were male, 44% of them black, and basketball and football athletes accounted for 68% of the total number. Hypotrophic cardiomyopathy had been the case in 24% of those deaths and 18% accounted for coronary artery abnormalities.
In a more recent study, done in 2013, there are an average incidence of 3.6 deaths per 100,000 each year. Males still dominate the athletes who suffer from this - five times higher than females. Cardiomyopathy has been the main cause of sudden cardiac death in youth athletes in recent years, and there is a high incidence in black athletes than in white athletes. Basketball and football are still the sports that have the highest incidence, as they were in the past. However, we now know more about the heart and the other reasons sudden cardiac death happens in youth. Some of these factors are arrythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, and congential long QT syndromes, among many others that are discussed in the study.
The many different congenital abnormalities and syndromes are exactly why a preparticipation screen is necessary in youth athletes. More physicans dealing with youth athletes need to incorporate an EKG in this screen to rule out harmful heart conditions that are more common now than ever. However, the American Heart Association does not support routine use of the EKG because of controversy regarding false positive tests. And this is where the use of AEDs come in. They are established in a Emergency Protocol because there is a lack of EKG screenings and having an AED on hand is helpful for those instances that an athlete does go into arrest and we did not know they had a heart condition.
Do you think we need more EKG screens? Or is the ability to save a life with an AED enough? In my opinion, I think the AHA needs to get off their butts and allow the athletes to be screened. If we can know what heart conditions these athletes may have, we can be more aware of what they can and can't do in sports and how we can help improve their heart health.
Read the journal articles below. Tell me what you think!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155532/
http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1659758
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