Sudden cardiac death during exercise

I'm sure all those lard arses out there will love you for telling them that excersise is potentially  'dangerous'.

Obesity is at record levels and excersise could save the NHS millions. Heart disease( through poor diet and sedantry lifestyle) and cancers kill millions. Do you really think the NHS can afford to screen runners when alot of people don't even keep the sport up for more than a couple of years.

Contraindicate...I must admit I had to look the word up!......to indicate possible danger!....Does this mean the family can sue the doctor if the runner dies!...Give me a break!

But hey lets talk about running..... "it can kill you".  Perhaps there should be warnings on the entry form..."Running Kills"

I don't actually read the Mail...perhaps I should start. All these people that seem to be agreeing with you BTB, have they booked themself in for a test?..Of course they haven't.

When unhealthy people try and take on a marathon(or any event they haven't trained for) they will have problems. It doesn't take a 5 year study to tell you that.

Hey I was a little worried this morning when I went out for a steady 50 mins run with my family. Luckily we all came back in one piece, then again we may have had a mild heart attack and not known!

You concern yourselves about the report, I'll stick to my running (without a test thx).

Torque Steer ,....£24 for a test...Where?....Poland!

A heart exam ..at rest and 'worked' by running on a treadmill!

A physio costs about £30/half-hour....Who's gonna test you his/her secretary?

FtP,

I had an Echocardiogram carried out privately recently, cost about the same as a set of Orthotics from your Podiatrist !

A.

ftp, next time I have a medical, I'll ask them about getting the ECG done on a treadmill.

I don't think there's any danger of BtB discouraging "lard arses" as you call them
because they won't be reading this site anyway.

I'm not knocking the idea at all.

My mother worked in a secondary school for 25 years and in that time they had two instances of teenagers dropping dead on the sports field, from previously undiagnosed heart conditions. If a test can be cheaply and simply administered to identify those at risk in childhood, then it would have benefitted those teenagers.

But I'm getting on for 50 and tbh don't want to be told I'm susceptible to sudden death during sport. If  I were, I suppose it would have happened by now anyway. Also, if I were I'd probably go back to slobbing and smoking - nothing to lose. And as I said, if it's time to go then I'd rather go suddenly. Once those I leave behind have gotten over the shock, they'll have the pleasure of learning that I'm worth 10 times more dead than I ever was alive!

<goes off to dig out his old Reggie Perrin tapes>

You do that Mike, and if they advise you to stop running will you thank them?...more to the point, will you believe them?

Will you be having the test because this report as concerned you?

Or because your trying to score some points in this debate?

'Lard arses' is probally a bit strong, but I honestly believe that reports like this do more harm than good!.

Everything should be done to encourage people to get off their backsides and excercise and I feel reports like this are detrimental and inaccurate.

If someone is concerned then of course they should go to the doctor, but do they really need a 5yr report to tell them?

I'm confused to how the test would have 'saved' the teenagers Muttley.

Would it have condemned them to a sedantry life?

Or would it have put them on medication for the rest of their life? Or maybe a heart transplant? Or would they just 'know' they are at risk? I'd rather not know. Doctors are always making mistakes. I have 2 kids approaching teen years. I would not want them to have a test, I prefer to let life take its course.

Some people are scared to do anything these days!...As one person earlier said "life is a risk".

Well, if the defect can be cured or significantly reduced then it would be beneficial, ftp. But I take your point about it possibly condemning them to a sedentary existence. In fact, the more I think about it, I'm inclined to agree that some things are better not known. I'd be very interested to know if I were at risk of a nasty illness, so I could watch out for the symptoms and take any possible pre-emptive or preparatory action.

But on the other hand I wouldn't 

<thud>

oh dear I wish people would take the trouble to actually read the stuff instead of headlining off on false trails.

The cost of £24 was taken from the report and I imagine was extrapolated from the Italian costs as it is given in Euros first and then converted into sterling. Not unlike most units of production costs per unit drop as quantity increases.
The Italians have been carrying out such tests and have reduced the incidence of death by cardiomyopathy by 90% in sport since 1982 when the tests were first introduced.

It has nothing to do with lardarses - it is merely a sensible precaution for those not sufficiently self centred to think only about its impact upon themselves.

Strangely I had both a passive and exercise ECG only last  week for different reasons to this and didn't know of this paper otherwise I may have asked some more questions - it didn't take very long, was supervised by a nursing sister who compared print outs which revealed no abnormality. I imagine ti would have been referred upwards (to a consultant!!) if an abnormality had been detected.

Faithfulred..You seem to be one of those people who points a question at someone and then answers it themself....strange!

Detrimental?...Any report  that may put somebody off running IS detrimental.

Inaccurate?...The report 'suggests' that 1 in 500 people are at risk.....Are they suggesting in a race of 1000, 2 people are at risk to die? ..46,500 ran the FLM are they suggesting 100 people are at risk of dying?..I don't think 100 died this year or any year for that!

Opinion? ...An opinion is just that! an opinion. It can neither be right or wrong, thats the whole point .It is an opinion!

Torque ...conveniently you never mentioned how much your tests where. Good old NHS eh?..Ali in his own way as already said it cost him £300!

>> It's a factual report, based on the experiences of a country which funds it's healthcare differently to ours. They seem to be finding dangerous conditions better than we do, and report a way that we could improve.

The question that I would ask is whether this problem is treatable?

If it isn't then what's the point in testing for it? I doubt that anyone, no matter how careful, could go through life without exerting themselves and even if they could what would their quality of life be like? If the condition is untreatable then I would rather not know and risk death doing something that I enjoy rather than go through life unable to do anything just in case I might raise my heart rate and keel over.

If it is treatable on the NHS then I'm all for testing.

What Richard said.

Back home in Cornwall, in the village where I grew up (and where I often return) there's a family in which three brothers all keeled over suddenly in their late 40s to early 50s from massive heart failure. Just seems they were genetically programmed to do so. None were particularly unhealthy otherwise. One of them even keeled over in the pub. The landlord said he was supping his pint and chatting one minute, and the next he kind of "deflated", as the landlord put it, and slid off his stool by the bar onto the floor. The medics arrived and said he would have been stone cold dead by the time he hit the floor.

Now that to me is the perfect death (except for being premature). I hope I go that way - no pain, no distress, doing something I enjoy, not knowing what hit me. But I don't want to know if I'm likely to or when because that would influence my lifestyle decisions without much prospect of changing my fate.

To say that this is self-centred (if I understood that correctly) is a little harsh imho. If I do go that way I'd hope that my family would be much less saddened by my passing. My father's death hurt much more for having been protracted and very nasty indeed (cancer of the oesophagus - honestly, if the docs ever tell me I've got that I hope I have the courage to buy a one-way ticket to Dignitas).

I can see the reasoning behind the test idea but it's not for me. Unless, as Richard says, it's coupled with a cure.

Muttley
there is a considerable difference between that tragic tale of family genetics and death through exercise induced cardiomyopathy.
Again the report makes it quite plain that it is dealing with heart abnormalities detected during exercise - very often the precursor to the "sudden death syndrome" in seemingly normal heathy adults and teenagers - and which did not show up in normal resting ECG scans.
I imagine those who were screened out were reasonably grateful that they could carry on living a long and full life providing they did not engage in over strenuous activities - pity they were not followed up in the study for analysis.

ftp
I guess that after contributing fully to the NHS for 40 years for a cost to them of setting a few bones I am still in credit - and my point initially about cost was that preventative medicine, including screening, offers better value for money than remedial treatment  when diseases have advanced and are more difficult to treat. Something like " a stitch in time............................." . Just look at what screening for breast cancer has done for women as an example of preventative medicine in action.

As to self centred - not you particularly - but if the cap fits............................
I have seen at first hand the trauma experienced by a family involved in a "sudden death" of an active teenager - the grief and the anguish and the constant questioning of " could we have done any more to prevent it"
How do you think they would feel if they found out that another European country had a screening programme in place for 25 years? I am certainly not going to tell them!!!!

I am a bit woried about the logistics involved.  As more people seem to die during the GNR than FLM you would have to include half marathons as well as marathons - the Italian study involved fewer people than anually compete in the FLM, so how many would be ultimately involved throughout the UK?  The cost and manpower involved in providing such mass screening would be huge and even if provided my private health companies would still divert resources from the NHS, even if only in terms of expertise.  Also the additional cost/ inconvenience would a lot of people off entering such events if the tests were mandatory.

In the case of the young people who die, surely that is usually involved when playing football or similar sports rather than distance running. In that case all school children involved in should be included.  Presumably in the case of children the NHS would provide this - with the result that those who are most in need of testing because of known problems would face massive delays for their tests and treatment.

After a great day of sport. A local half, the GP and tennis. I managed to fit in a steady 90 mins running.

I open this thread and was wondering if there had been any intelligent argument for the benefit of screening the masses who intend to run or take part in any sport for that matter. From infants to pensioners! Which I assume in this country would be about 30/40 million!

Nothing! .....As I said in my initial response to BTB, "what is the point of this thread?"

As soon as you scratch the surface it is obvious that this report and thread is nothing more than scare-mongering. It is unworkable.

P.S. I've just ate 4 cheese on toast......Any body got any figures on the potential threat to my life they may have? 

For anyone with an interest in Cardiac Health care and research this thread is very intersting and it raises lots of questions and debate

If you arent interested in it why are you bothering with it?

Sorry Buney do I need your permission?

Interesting!....Thats great why don't you contribute then, are you off for a test?...should the whole sporting nation be tested?....or do you just want to disagree with me?