The heart between the risk of sudden death and chronic life

Abstract

In recent years, medical and surgical therapy has progressed such that even children with the most complex cardiac disease may reach adulthood with an acceptable quality of life. However, apart from this minority, pediatricians and cardiologists deal with diseases such as cardiomyopathies, arrhythmias, channelopathies and other acquired heart diseases. The majority of patients can be problematic 'cause of a cardiac murmur or in obtaining a certificate of sports eligibility. Following recent regulations, in Italy the electrocardiogram (ECG) must be performed also in 6-year-old children who want to practice sport. Although the ECG is a simple and inexpensive tool with good diagnostic accuracy, there remains the issue of false positives that results in additional costs and alarms. The modern era is facing a pandemic, that is, the spread of digital lifestyle and obesity. The only vaccine against this plague is exercise. Denying sport to children for a false positive test may expose them to obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other bad habits. For some, it may be preferable to accept the infinitesimal risk of sudden death rather than being condemned to a chronic life. Like all therapies, sports can have side effects and overdoses. If this happens in the most dramatic way - cardiac arrest - there is the antidote (i.e., the automated external defibrillator). More than 100 years since its birth, the ECG retains a sustainable and irreplaceable lightness. Nevertheless, the ECG seems to suffer from a sort of collective dyslexia. As cardiologists, we should learn to read pediatric ECG and minimize the false positive rate to prevent a healthy child from having a worse quality of life than cardiac patients saved from modern cardiac surgery.