title: Pre-competition cardiac screening in professional handball players - setting up at the EHF European Handball Championship 2010 in Austria.
abstract: In many sports, regular cardiac screening for exercise-associated sudden cardiac death is still not provided. To set up the current situation in top-skilled handball players qualified for the 2010 European Handball Championship in Austria, a standardised questionnaire was sent to every team. The fact that only 42.7% of the players returned the questionnaire may lead to the conclusion that the awareness of the problem is quite low. However, 82% of these players have been screened according to current recommendations. Half of the teams were screened inhomogeneously: 5 players (4.1%) have not been screened within the last years, 1 athlete (0.8%) was screened without an ECG. While 69% of the athletes got their first screening only after the age of 18, 16 players (13.1%) never went through a specific screening ever. We identified 17 athletes (13.9%) with a highly suspicious history, 2 of them (1.6%) never underwent a medical screening at all.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Kantonsspital St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Reinhard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Geyer
authors.forename: Hans-Georg
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Predel
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wolber
authors.forename: Klaus-Peter
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Mellwig
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schmied
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001317:Austria; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D016757:Death, Sudden, Cardiac / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004452:Echocardiography; D004562:Electrocardiography; D005060:Europe; D005080:Exercise Test; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008487:Medical History Taking; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D013177:Sports; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014600:Utilization Review / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult