The charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), in a joint initiative with Philips, recently launched its ‘Save Our Athletes Research Project’. This fiveyear athlete cardiac research study involves data from the USA and Germany. By concentrating on all elite athletes, CRY will be able to gain a broader understanding of the effects of heavy and light exercise on the heart.
Sir Ian Botham OBE, president of the CRY Sports Centre of Cardiology commented, “We want anyone who participates in sport to have heart screening, just as they do in Italy. The Save Our Athletes screening programme is a giant step towards that because of the empirical evidence it will provide. We must stop the terrible tragedies of young people involved in sport dying needlessly.”
The screening programme will be led by Professor Greg Whyte, chairman of CRY and Professor of Applied Sport and Exercise Science, Liverpool John Moores University, working in tandem with consultant cardiologist, Dr. Sanjay Sharma, director of Heart Muscle Disease at King’s College Hospital, London. In the first two years, CRY will screen 1500 elite athletes using the latest cardiac imaging technology from Philips, at centres across the UK, including the Centre for Sports Cardiology at the Olympic Medical Institute, London.
