Cardio-respiratory pre-participation screening of competitive athletes

Substantially, it was to highlight how valuable is the routine use of ECG, echocardiography and spirometry among the pre-participation routine examinations for the athletes to differentiate between normal physiological and the pathological changes that could face down the performance of the athletes during competitions or even more might endanger their lives. The study was conducted among some junior athletes who were attending at Sports Medicine center in Madinat Nasr for regular assessment of their physical fitness. The study sample included 120 junior athletes from the national team of football [< 17 years and < 19 years]. Another 95 non- athletic healthy individuals from the school for talented students were selected to represent the control group. They were classified into two groups, each one was matching with a corresponding athletic group in age. Age, body weight, height and body mass index were recorded. Ergometric test with Spirometry, ECG and echocardiography were applied for all the participants. Both groups were matching with their corresponding controls concerning age and height, while the weight and body mass index were found to be statistically significantly higher among their corresponding controls. It was proved in our study that athletes do have statistically significantly lower resting heart and maximum heart rates with higher VO2 max comparing with the non athletes. The anaerobic threshold values were statistically significantly lower among the athletes that were found to be achieved after prolonged times of performance if compared with the control groups. All the spirometric parameters were statistically significantly higher among the athletes. EGG and echocardiography, revealed a normal and accepted physiological changes that can be acquired due to prolonged training. Based on the results of the study, it's deemed that spirometry, ECG, and echocardiography must be tabled among the pre-participation routine examinations of the athletes as a sensible approach to differentiate the physiological changes from the pathological ones, which subsequently can mitigate the usual raised concern of sudden death of athletes during prolonged competitions

Serum iron, ferritin and transferrin in patients with ischemic heart disease

To shed more light on the relationship between ischemic heart disease and iron, serum iron parameters [iron, ferritin and transferring] were estimated in fifty ischemic heart patients [15 stable angina-15 crescendo angina and 20 acute Myocardial Infarction. MI]. Their ages ranged 43-58 years- Ten healthy subjects, matched with patients for age and sex, sevred as control group. Echocardiographic studies [ejection fraction [EF] and end systolic volume [ESV] together with peak serum creatine phosphokinase [CPK] were done for each case of infarction to correlate these variables with the corresponding serum iron parameters. compared to controls, ischemic heart patients had highly significant increase of serum iron [103.5 +/- 25.6 vs 79.6 +/- 19.2, p<0.01] and serum ferritin [94.7 +/- 54.2 vs 44.4 +/- 11.0. p<0.01] whereas they showed insignificant increase of serum transferrin [273.8 +/- 83.8 vs 244.1 +/- 56.4, p<0.05]]. Subgroup analysis showed that there was statistically significant increase in serum iron and ferritin but not transferrin in patients with stable and unstable angina while in cases with acute MI, there was significant increase in all serum iron parameters. correlation studies showed that serum iron and ferritin but not transferrin were strongly correlated with peak CPK. EF and ESV. Patients with acute MI who had complicated in-hospital course showed significant higher value of serum iron. ferritin. transferrin, CPK and ESV but they had a significant lower EF than non-complicated cases. In conclusion, serum iron and ferritin were significantly higher in ischemic heart patients while serum transferrin was significantly higher only in patients with acute MI In the infarction group, the higher the serum iron and ferritin, the larger is the size of infarction, the worser is the in-hospital course and the more impaired is the systolic function. Thus, the present study might give a new meaning for the emerging role of iron in ischemic heart disease