Cardio Direct

Cardio Direct works with professional clubs and individual athletes in the promotion and provision of cardiac screening and ongoing support.

They have offered a cardiovascular sports screen to every player in the England women’s rugby team and to promote awareness of cardiac screening amongst female athletes.

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC 2005) recommends cardiac screening for any young person taking part in competitive sport and the women of the RFUW, like all professional athletes regularly push their hearts to an extreme. It’s therefore critical that any hidden heart problems which can be structural or electrical, are diagnosed and treated.

England Doctor Steve Lewis says, “Cardiac screening is a vital assessment which allows us to introduce intense training and conditioning programmes for the players, safe in the knowledge that their hearts are capable of coping with the subsequent physiological stress placed upon them.  I am very pleased that Cardio Direct have made this screening available to our ladies who
have previously been unable to be screened to the level that is being offered. It is an excellent service which gives reassurance to both players and medics alike”.

A cardiac screening includes:

A questionnaire, covering family history, medical history and a check list of possible exercise related conditions

Blood pressure measurement

A 12 lead ECG

An echocardiogram

A conclusive report on the results from a consultant cardiologist

Alongside the screening programme in partnership with the RFUW, Cardio Direct plan to use the data collected to add to the research into the athletic heart. To date there is no published research into female athletes and their hearts and we hope to use ours to help understand and reduce cardiac incidence in athletes.

Please visit www.cardiodirect.co.uk more information