Does preseason screening for cardiac disease really work?: the British perspective.

Sudden cardiac death is always a tragedy. Sudden death during sport is particularly poignant because people tend to associate sport with health and fitness. Both the public and the medical profession would like to prevent such events, and preparticipation medical screening is often promoted as one such method. When we examine the risk of death, the prevalence of at-risk conditions, the natural history of disease, and the screening methods available, it is clear that widespread screening would not be useful. Systematic preparticipation screening is not undertaken widely in the United Kingdom, but this practice has evolved and is not the result of a definite policy decision.