Published 9 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a739
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a739

Editor's Choice

Olympic dreams

Domhnall MacAuley, primary care editor, BMJ

dmacauley@bmj.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Many enjoy sport, yet few achieve sporting excellence: most are ordinary people doing ordinary things on local playing fields on a wet Saturday. In this issue we focus on the health risks and benefits of exercise. No glamour, excitement, glorious triumphs, or multimillion pound endorsements—just some simple messages for your patients and mine. And there’s more to follow in the BMJ in coming weeks.

Sudden cardiac death in sport is a headline grabber. Pressure groups seek screening, distraught parents look for solutions, but science struggles to find evidence. Most of what we know of mass testing comes from Italy, where medical examination before participation in organised sport is mandatory. We already know that physical examination alone is ineffective; now Sofi and colleagues in Florence find in a large cross sectional study of all ages that, of those ultimately excluded from competitive sport, 79% had normal resting electrocardiographs (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a346). . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ