College athletes and cardiac arrest

We’ve all heard the heart breaking stories of the promising student athlete who dies on the court or on the field, suddenly and without explanation. Most recently Wes Leonard collapsed on the basketball court and died of sudden heart failure after making his team’s game winning shot.

How common is heart failure among college athletes? In a study published in Circulation, Dr. Kimberly Harmion of the University of Washington culled data from the NCAA’s health and safety office with other published data from a variety of internet searches in order to find out.

For the period 2004-2008, they discovered 273 total death of student athletes. The majority were from accidents, but 80 of them were due to medically related causes. Heart failure was attributed to 45 of the deaths. That is one death for every 44,000 athletes in a year.

The athletes most likely to fall were among Division 1 male basketball players. One died for every 3,100 playing the sport each year. Cardiac arrest also claimed the lives of male and black athletes over female and white athletes. Swimmers and lacrosse players followed basketball players.

There is some controversy about whether or not to recommend ECG screening for the athletes. At $100 per screening cost is a concern. But also, in Israel where screening is mandates there is no discernible difference in the number of incidences.

It appears the best thing may be treatment and that means each school having an automated external defibrillator where it would do the most good: on basketball courts. An AED costs about $3000 each.

While heart failure is in fact rare among these elite athletes, due to physical strain and hard to detect abnormalities, some do need emergency medical attention. The equipment should be there to help them.

Source: Circulation, Reuters