Nice coverage from @MassGeneralNews on our study of limitation of polygenic risk score for BMI in young adults in CARDIA study published in @JAMACardio w/ senior author @RaviShah_MD
I am hearing from primary care colleagues that parents are concerned their kids are playing competitive sports without EKG/echos.
More valuable than that would be to mandate no games/practice without AED + CPR trained coach, trainer, and/or official present.
Here is why 👇
1/
Screening for underlying issues in fit teens and young adults is low value. The findings are almost always normal and even when they appear abnormal they are usually false positives.
2/
These kids will end up having lots of expensive & potentially invasive testing which will either lead nowhere or lead to an incorrect recommendation not to exercise at a high level. This is tragic and wasteful.
Imagine incorrectly being told you can't play a sport you love!
3/
To be honest, this is even more complex than the factors in my initial thread. Been rounding so couldn't give it enough detail, but here are few more...
A baseball will deposit that energy in a smaller surface area than a human head generally will. The concentration of that energy is required because if parts of it are not over the heart they won't cause a cardiac problem
2/
The deformation issue is also more complex.
Not only does deformation reduce the energy transferred, it spreads out the time over which the energy is transferred making it more likely part of the energy is deposited outside the vulnerable period.
3/
Generally trauma to the chest from person-person deposits only a small amount of energy into the heart compared to small hard objects like a baseball or motor vehicle collisions.
The amount of energy is proportional to the square of the velocity of the impact.
1/
There is a huge difference in the square of 90+ MPH fastball (9025 mph-squared) version a 10 MPH person (100 mph-squared) - nearly 100x!
Mass also matters, but the effective mass is not necessarily entire mass of person impacting but unsupported mass, depending on geometry.
2/
Also, some energy can be lost to deformation. This is how padding works - it deforms, dissipating energy.
Humans are also somewhat deformable due to motion of joints, soft tissue, etc.
3/
1) The self-limited troponemia referred to is not a diagnosis. The diagnosis is myocarditis, post-COVID vaccine
2) The relative awfulness of these diseases is not the only issue. Their relative frequency is not the only issue.
3) Myocarditis is a spectrum. Can range from rapidly progressive to death to mild chest pain with no further consequence. Like most diseases, the mild forms are much more common than the severe.
#2 Is that few MRI experts were asked before/during hype. Sports cardiologists & celebrity docs dominated the scene with weak understanding of what these tests were showing & what they showed in normal people.
Selective credentialism sucks.
#3 Early closing of the Overton window is not science. But in this fact checking culture we are quick to determine what is truth and terminate further discussion.
In this case the estimated rate of CMR findings due to COVID was probably off by 100x or more at first.