QUINCY, ILL. -- More than six million athletes across the United States play some kind of competitive sport for their school or college, and they all have one thing in common.
They can be more likely to suffer from sudden cardiac death.
The condition is called hypertrophic obstructive cardio-myopathy, in layman's terms, it's an enlarged heart.
In the past month, two athletes have died from complications with this condition; one a basketball player at the University of Southern Indiana, the second a player in the NFL.
For Your Safe Family report, KHQA's Jarod Wells sat down with two doctors to find out more about this heart condition, and what all parents and coaches should know to keep our athletes safe.
Basketball players and athletes of all kinds work and train to keep their bodies in top physical shape. Even athletes in great shape can have an enlarged heart and not know it. It's the most common cause of sudden cardiac death among US athletes under age 35.
Quincy Medical Group Cardiologist Dr. Stilianos Efstratiadis said, "A congenital heart problem that's going to be a thickened heart muscle that will obstruct the flow and will just make the heart work very hard and during exertion, the patients will just collapse."
Symptoms of an enlarged heart can range from becoming light-headed or dizzy while training to passing out during exercise. In some cases, the first symptom is sudden cardiac death.
QMG Sports Medicine Director Dr. Anthony Biggs said, "We know that, although unfortunate, the sudden death in sport is still relatively rare. And it's rare to the point where it's not really routinely, at least there's not been any recommendations, to routinely screen for this."
There are ways to test for an enlarged heart.
Dr. Efstratiadis said, "The best way to test for it is, go to your doctor and just a regular electrocardiogram, it's an easy test to do."
Still, that screening isn't fool-proof, it can give false positives and false negatives. For more accurate testing, patients can have an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. But testing all athletes for this condition is not realistic.
Dr. Biggs said, "With the amount of athletes that we see across the country and the number of sudden deaths that occur, there's really not a good way to screen this that can be both efficacious and financially able to screen this the way we need to screen it."
What is your recommendation to young athletes, at this point, dealing with these complications?
Dr. Biggs said , "My recommendation would be to have a yearly physical exam, if you're in athletics or playing sports competitively. "
Most athletes normally have a slightly enlarged heart. Training hard can sometimes bring on signs and symptoms that appear similar to an enlarged heart. That's why it's extremely important to talk to your doctor about your health history and stay up-to-date on your physical exam before playing sports. That can tell you what is normal for your heart and what may need some more attention.
Jarod asked both doctors if an athlete with an enlarged heart can have a normal athletic career.
He found out it depends how severe the condition is.
Some athletes may be told not to play at all, others may be limited in what they can do.
Here are a few statistics to keep in mind.
It can be as high as one in 400,000 athletes who suffers sudden cardiac death.
Even though an enlarged heart is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death in athletes, it is not always the cause.
Athletes with some sort of heart defect are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death than a person who doesn't participate in rigorous sports.
Now in the general public, one in about 500 people have some sort of an abnormal enlarged heart.
