Blog

A new interesting article has been published in Br J Sports Med. 2019 Jul 17. pii: bjsports-2018-100293. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2018-100293. and titled:

The Italian preparticipation evaluation programme: diagnostic yield, rate of disqualification and cost analysis.

Authors of this article are:

Vessella T#, Zorzi A#, Merlo L, Pegoraro C, Giorgiano F, Trevisanato M, Viel M, Formentini P, Corrado D, Sarto P.

A summary of the article is shown below:

INTRODUCTION: Italian law mandates that every competitive athlete must undergo annual preparticipation evaluation (PPE) to identify cardiovascular (CV) diseases that pose a risk of sudden death (SD) during sport and other conditions that may threaten the athlete’s health. We investigated the diagnostic yield, rate of disqualification and costs of our PPE.METHODS: We included 5910 consecutive apparently healthy athletes (61% males, mean age 15±4 years) who underwent annual PPE performed by a sports medicine specialist. The PPE included history, physical examination, weight, height and blood pressure measurement, test of visual acuity, spirometry, urine chemistry, resting 12-lead ECG and exercise testing with ECG monitoring. In cases of abnormal findings, we carried out second-line investigations.RESULTS: During a 12-month study period, 5.326 (90.2%) athletes were cleared for competition after a normal first-line evaluation and 584 (9.8%) underwent one or more further examinations. Of those, 88 (1.5%) were diagnosed to have a CV disease (including 18 (0.3%) at-risk of SD) and 31 (0.5%) had a non-CV diagnosis. A total of 32 (0.5%) athletes were temporarily (n=15) or permanently (n=17) disqualified from competitive sports. The average cost per athlete was €79, which consisted of €64 (80%) for first-line evaluations and €15 (20%) for additional investigations.CONCLUSION: PPE according to the Italian model identified a range of diseases in 2.0% of apparently healthy athletes at an average cost of €79.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:

[link-preview url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31315826 forceshot=true]

This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: athletes;cost–benefit analysis;preparticipation screening;sports medicine;sudden death.

New Chemicals from MOLECULAR DEPOT

New Proteins from MOLECULAR DEPOT


New Antibodies from MOLECULAR DEPOT


New Research Kits from MOLECULAR DEPOT