Check up Your Heart!

KAZAN – FISU, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Tatarstan and the Faculty of Medicine of the State University of Kazan and of course the Organising Committee of the 27th Summer Universiade established a data collection programme on athletes which will also be an excellent tool for preventive medicine.

From June 30th to July 18th, participating athletes at the 27th Universiade are invited to submit to a health and heart test.

Each athlete participating in this programme, will receive a height, weight and blood pressure check, as well as an electro cardiogram and echocardiogram.

These data will be coupled with a health questionnaire. Athletes will be evaluated based on the results and divided into four categories: normal, minor abnormalities with no follow up required, abnormalities with recommendation for follow up and disqualifying abnormalities that strongly recommend/require follow up prior to competition (the proportion of athletes in this category is estimated at less than 0.5%).

Each athlete will be given a USB stick with their ‘Check Your Heart’ evaluation statistics. The Programme developers expect to collect data on about 3,000 athletes.

This programme is unique in more ways than one. Indeed, this is the first time a study of this magnitude will occur during a multi-sport event. This study has nothing to do with anti-doping but should be regarded as a genuine tool of preventive medicine. In addition, researchers at the University of Kazan will also benefit from the data collected to highlight the physiological differences between the different types of athletes.

FISU is very proud to have been able to implement such a programme and hopes that the results will match the expectations.

Yvan Dufour, FISU Chief Editor