Death By Running: It really is The Heat And Not The Heart

The developing popularity of marathons and other extreme sports has sparked worries about the likely dangers of these pursuits. The well-liked press and health-related research have both targeted on the chance of cardiac arrest and other heart rhythm problems. But  that concern might be misdirected. A new study from Israel published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that a considerably a lot more significant danger may be heat stroke, which is defined as a core body temperature over 104 or 105 degrees connected with multiorgan dysfunction.

Researchers retrospectively reviewed data from far more than 137,000 runners who participated in endurance races in Tel Aviv. They identified only 2 significant cardiac situations: one heart attack and one arrhythmia. Serious circumstances of heat stroke, nonetheless, occurred in 21 runners. Two of the situations had been fatal and twelve had been existence threatening.

The Israeli researchers explained that the diagnosis of heat stroke can be missed and mistaken for a cardiac disorder unless the core temperature– which can only be reliably obtained with a rectal measurement– is taken quickly. They raise the chance that many situations that have been imagined to be cardiac in nature may possibly actually be triggered by heat stroke:

…social-cultural conceptions and logistic issues may possibly stop the implementation of immediate rectal temperature assessment following collapse in a race, particularly in urban regions. Unheralded collapse with documented ventricular fibrillation could be the mode of presentation of heat stroke. In this setting, the right diagnosis will be missed if, as usually takes place, the rectal temperature is not measured promptly.

They even more mentioned that “the risk of heat stroke is not limited to endurance races,” and is “an essential lead to of death between substantial college and school football players, who train and compete wearing hefty protective products.”

The study might also have crucial implications for the ongoing debate more than no matter whether pupil athletes ought to be screened prior to participating in sports activities, the authors mentioned. In an accompanying editorial, Brian Olshansky and David Cannom write that “heat stroke has no predictive clinical profile that a screening examination may uncover and can only be diagnosed at the onset of the episode.”

Death By Running: It really is The Heat And Not The Heart