Elite Footballers’ Heart Problems: A Growing Concern in the Sport

Elite footballers were victims of heart problems during their careers

Cardiac events in the football field, such as the case of Antonio Puerta in 2007 and the most recent case of Tom Lockyer, captain of Luton Town in the Premier League, continue to shock fans, due to the general idea and perception of society, which believes that athletes, being subject to rigorous health checks, represent the paradigm of optimal physical condition.

In recent years it seems that cases have been occurring more frequently, especially after the pandemic. Christian Eriksen was dead for a few minutes on June 12, 2021, during a Euro Cup match between Denmark and Finland. Sergio Aguero was forced to retire from professional football after suffering an arrhythmia in the middle of a duel against Deportivo Alavés on October 30, 2021. On January 14, 2022, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang was unable to play a match with his team in the African Cup of Nations after CAF doctors detected a heart condition after contracting COVID-19. The Colombian Andrés Balanta died of cardiac arrest after collapsing after training on November 29, 2022 and in November of this year the Ghanaian player Raphael Dwamena lost his life during a match between KF Egnatia and Partizani Tirana of the Albania.

In dialogue with Infobae, cardiologist Mario Fitz Maurice maintains that, “these are very rare events, with an incidence between 1 in every 150,000 athletes per year,” and that “during the pandemic, there was a higher incidence of myocarditis in the patients who had COVID infections. The cases remain the same (relative to the average annual number), but they are more widespread and visible. It is no longer something so rare and then it seems that there are more of them.”

“We have all seen elite players who have had these types of events and no one thinks that these athletes were not exhaustively studied,” acknowledges Maurice (MN 83671). “Their studies showed normal results at the time of the evaluation, but the conditions can change: from the environmental temperature, the body temperature, the adrenaline discharge and the different biological changes that a person can have, which mean that at that moment they can give all these factors together and that arrhythmia is triggered in a heart studied and seen as normal,” he explains.

To understand it from another perspective, sports psychologist Diego McGuire considers that “a soccer player, before being an athlete, is a person, which is why, when it comes to having competitions, he will surely have a stress factor. The system as a whole will be influenced by an emotional tension and a psychological tension that will obviously influence the athlete’s musculoskeletal system, the athlete’s biological system (in his organs), one of them being the heart. .

Focusing on the definition that refers to the fact that an athlete is first a person, the clinical and sports psychologist affirms that some players take to the field with emotional and psychological tensions of high competition (pressures and demands for results, sponsors, economic), as well as personal (family, relationship, economic problems, etc.). “All of this will be within the playing field, coexisting with their thoughts, emotions and their physical locomotor system,” he points out.

The sports neurotraining coach also concludes: “These physical and psychological tensions can be represented by an acceleration of the heart rate, with a dysrhythmia, with different problems at the cardiac level, blood circulation or high blood pressure. Of course, it can be totally associated with emotional and psychological stress factors.”

Aguero retired after suffering a decompensation in the middle of the game (Reuters)

Worry takes over the atmosphere. Desperation, fear and uncertainty come into play every time a player collapses on the grass or stops dead after feeling abnormalities in his chest. On November 24, 2021, Malian Adama Traoré fainted after touching his heart area in the 70th minute of the duel between Sheriff and Real Madrid for the Champions League. On December 11 of that year, Manchester United defender Victor Lindelof suddenly had problems and had to go to the locker room with the doctors in a match against Norwich in the Premier League and recently Dragisa Gudelj lost consciousness in the Córdoba – Melilla de la Tercera Spanish division.

“What the medical team that works with athletes must do is detect the possible causes that may not be structurally visible in the heart, but that can cause this type of events,” suggests Fitz Maurice and adds: “These causes are little. visible with the studies because they do not appear at the time of evaluation. The studies are normal and they may appear in a sporting event with a patient who has been thoroughly studied and all of his clinical studies came back normal.”

“It is essential to have first aid services that include defibrillators and people trained to do CPR,” highlights the Director of the National Institute of Arrhythmias INADEA and adds: “The first responders (when a case occurs) can be the teammate themselves, the referee, the rival. But it has to be someone who knows how to do CPR and use defibrillators. There is training for that. But there also has to be this type of device, which what they do is cut off the arrhythmia that causes sudden death. They are very simple devices to handle and are fundamental and mandatory by national law 27,159 in sports activity centers.”

Finally, with the intention of preventing any similar episode, the Head of the arrhythmia service at the Rivadavia Hospital encourages continuous monitoring: “Be monitored by cardiologists and sports specialists who can find the minimum signs early to prevent this type of event.” At the same time, he warns that “under no circumstances should physical activity be done in places that do not have defibrillators and people trained to do CPR. In addition to the fact that the law requires it, the players have to demand it because it is the care of their lives and those of their teammates.”

Eriksen collapsed in a match for the Euro Cup (Efe)

Christian Eriksen and Kun Aguero: two similar and different cases at the same time

Both football figures suffered heart problems of different levels. While one fell collapsed on the grass, the other stopped dead and asked for the intervention of the medical service. Both underwent surgery. One was fitted with an ICD (Implantable Automatic Defibrillator), while the other was fitted with an event recorder. One continued playing and another tearfully announced his retirement from professional sports.

Regarding the Danish midfielder, he suffered a sudden death and a defibrillator was placed on him at the direction of the specialist who examined him. 259 days after that shocking episode, and at the age of 30, the player returned to top competition under the Brentford shirt in the Premier League, even against medical recommendations.

In the case of the Argentine striker, the specialists who studied him considered that the implementation of an ICD was not necessary. With the event recorder, both the footballer and the doctor are able to detect any anomaly that occurs in real time and, if at any time he has an arrhythmia that requires an implantable defibrillator, that chip will be removed and the defibrillator will be placed. implantable.

Kun, however, was restricted from professional sports activity to prevent him from being the victim of an even more serious episode. “There are diseases in those under 35 that can exacerbate the possibilities of arrhythmia with sports, so when competitive sports are suspended, and they are given medical treatment and monitoring, arrhythmias do not appear. They are different pathologies and different personal decisions,” says Mario Fitz Maurice.

Some players and sports figures who suffered heart problems

Antonio Puerta (2007)

Dani Jarque (2009)

Davide Astori (2018)

Iker Casillas (2019)

Daley Blind (2019)

Sergio Aguero (2021)

Christian Eriksen (2021)

Fabrice Muamba (2021)

Victor Lindeloft (2021)

Andres Balanta (2022)

Pierre Emerick Aubameyang (2022)

Dragiša Gudelj (March and December 2023)

Tom Lockyer (2023)

Raphael Dwamena (2023)

2023-12-28 05:01:00
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