Medicina, Vol. 51 No. 2, 2015.
Pregledni rad
Prevention of sudden cardiac death in athletes – experiences in Croatia and foreign countries
Dalibor Veber
orcid.org/0000-0002-0102-6371
; Dom zdravlja Vukovar, Vukovar
Neven Varljen
orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-3667
; Ustanova za zdravstvenu skrb za medicinu rada i sporta – Medris, Rijeka
Vladimir Ivančev
; Kineziološki fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu, Split
Sažetak
Regular physical activity is of paramount importance for human health, however, vigorous exercise can increase the risk of sudden cardiac death in predisposed individuals. This problem is especially important for athletes, who have 2.8-fold higher risk of sudden cardiac death compared to the non-athlete population. Sudden cardiac death can result from multiple genetic and acquired diseases that can be diagnosed by screening examinations of athletes in the majority of cases. Although there are many causes, ventricular tachyarrhythmia is a common pathological mechanism that disturbs the function of the heart, which validates the necessity of equipping all sport arenas with an automated external defibrillator. Most of athletes do not have any warning symptoms of a latent heart disease. Therefore, many professional societies strongly support the idea of screening examinations of athletes as a strategy for early detection of “silent” heart diseases, although they do not share the same opinion about the scope of these examinations. The success of the Italian screening program is proved by the drop in mortality rate of athletes for 90 % after the implementation of regular screening examinations of athletes that included electrocardiogram. For many years Croatia has had the infrastructure and educated health professionals, sports medicine specialists and specialists of occupational health and sports medicine, for a successful implementation of screening examination of athletes based on the Italian model. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to raise the consciousness about the problem of sudden cardiac death, which can be largely prevented by establishing quality legal framework and by following the guidelines set by the Croatian Sports Medicine Society.
Ključne riječi
athletes; Croatia; electrocardiogram; screening examinations; sudden cardiac death
Hrčak ID:
139460
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.6.2015.
Posjeta: 3.390 *