Cheerleader Collapses and Dies At A Football Game
As you may know, my predecessor, Graehm Gray, was a champion for the prevention of sudden cardiac death in our young athletes by advocating routine cardiac testing of ALL of our young athletes as part of their pre-participation physicals. So many young kids make headlines, not by their talents on the court or field, but by their obituary. And now another young student, Angela Gettis, a 16 year old cheerleader from Los Angeles, California collapsed this past Friday at a football game. Her autopsy is pending. How many times have we read, “…..was such a good student,” or “….we never knew anything was wrong.”
Sudden cardiac death according to most sources is a rare event. Usually there are no significant symptoms experienced before the catastrophic event. Studies from Italy and in the United States have shown that the use of cardiac ultrasound screening can identify serious heart conditions (e.g hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) that would put our children at increased risk for physical activity. And not only would cardiac ultrasound screening help identify heart conditions in kids that would place them at high risk for sports, but also in college and professional athletes too (e.g. Hank Gathers-basketball player from Loyola Marymount University and Reggie Lewis-basketballplayer from the Boston Celtics)!
It’s a reoccurring theme. Thousands of child athletes get screened each year, most by simple history and physicals. Some are lucky enough to get an electrocardiogram. A few may get an advanced test called an echocardiogram-which is an ultrasound evaluation of the heart. There is no routine physical screening. Some physicians feel that taking a history from the student or family may be sufficient to grant a student access to sports. But is that really enough? And let’s look at the electrocardiogram. Recent studies have clearly indicated that even highly trained pediatric cardiologists may not recognize features of significant heart disease on an electrocardiogram and subsequently allow a student to play organized sports when they are at serious risk. So why hasn’t the medical community and the academic sporting associations come together to say that we need more testing of our kids before we allow them to play sports? Why is it taking so long to routinely utilize testing that we so readily have at our fingertips? It is clear that the medical community is divided. Many doctors are proponents of pre-sports cardiac testing while others will hide behind statistics saying that it won’t help detect all heart or medical problems. Of course there is no perfect test. And maybe we can’t prevent every possible medical problem from causing an unexpected death, but we can sure use what tests we have available to eliminate those problems that CAN be detected now.
If I can borrow an expression from GG, “my friends,” please let me know your thoughts on this. To me it is very simple: add the electrocardiogram and echocardiogram to ALL pre-participation sports examinations for all athletes. Is it really that much to ask for? Maybe we should ask that question to all of the parents that have lost kids from sudden cardiac death. What do you think their answer would be?
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