Live chat today: Teen heart health screenings
Members of La Center Middle School’s basketball coaching staff hold the jersey of Cody Sherrell during a ceremony honoring the boy Thursday inside the school’s gym. Cody died Jan. 9, six days after collapsing at the end of basketball practice.
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Columbian held a live Web chat at noon today, Friday, Feb. 24, to discuss heart health and the issue of screening teen athletes for heart conditions. We will be joined by Matt Nipper, an exercise physiologist at PeaceHealth Heart & Vascular Center.
"The loss of two young athletes and the near-death of a third student in Clark County have raised the visibility of sudden cardiac arrest among active teens, and many parents are taking precautionary measures to seek out screening options with the hope of identifying any risk to their own children," Nipper wrote in a Live Well column on Columbian.com Monday. "But these types of screenings are expensive, and there is controversy in the medical field about whether EKGs or Echocardiograms should be offered to every teenager who is participating in athletic activities."
The chat precedes the “Young Champions” screening clinic on Saturday, Feb. 25. The event is currently full, however weekly screenings are offered at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center for a $50 fee, half of which is donated to the Quinn Driscoll Foundation to support future screening events.
See a replay of the discussion at www.columbian.com/chat. A full transcript of the chat will run online tomorrow and a condensed version will run in The Columbian print edition.
