{"id":15309,"date":"2012-01-12T14:51:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T19:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=15309"},"modified":"2012-01-12T14:51:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T19:51:59","slug":"the-safety-of-the-long-distance-runner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/01\/12\/the-safety-of-the-long-distance-runner\/","title":{"rendered":"The Safety of the Long Distance Runner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long distance runners may be\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Loneliness_of_the_Long_Distance_Runner_(film)\" target=\"_parent\">lonely<\/a>\u00a0but they are not at high risk for sudden cardiac arrest,\u00a0according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/action\/clickThrough?id=2866&amp;url=%2Fdoi%2Ffull%2F10.1056%2FNEJMoa1106468&amp;loc=%2F\" target=\"_parent\">a study published in the\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/action\/clickThrough?id=2866&amp;url=%2Fdoi%2Ffull%2F10.1056%2FNEJMoa1106468&amp;loc=%2F\" target=\"_parent\">New England Journal of Medicine<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>The RACER (Race Associated Cardiac Arrest Event Registry) investigators analyzed data from 10.9 million registered participants in marathons and half-marathons that took place in the U.S. during the first decade of this century.<\/p>\n<p>They identified\u00a059 cases of \u00a0cardiac arrest; 40 occurred during marathons and 19 during half-marathons. The\u00a0mean age of the runners with cardiac arrest was 42 years; 51 were men and 8 were women.<\/p>\n<p>The rate of cardiac arrest was 1 per 184,000 participants; the rate of death was 1 per 259,000 participants. The authors describe this event rate as \u201crelatively low\u201d and compared it with rates in collegiate athletics (1 death per 43,770), triathlons (1 death per 52,630 participants), and previously healthy middle-aged joggers (1 death per 7620 participants).<\/p>\n<p>Event rates were higher for marathons than for half-marathons and for men than for women. Most events occurred during\u00a0the last quarter of the race. One possibly disturbing trend \u2013 for men\u00a0but not women \u2013 was that the incidence of cardiac arrest increased during the second half of the decade.<\/p>\n<p>The cause of cardiac arrest was determined in 31 cases \u2013 hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and possible HCM were the most frequent underlying causes of death. The authors express surprise at the absence of any subjects with coronary plaque rupture.\u00a0By contrast, in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMc1111015\" target=\"_parent\">a separate correspondence<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0<em>NEJM<\/em>, Alfred Albano and colleagues describe 3 male athletes who developed acute coronary thrombosis after finishing the 2011 Boston Marathon. They note that all 3 had arrived in Boston after a flight lasting longer than 4 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long distance runners may be\u00a0lonely\u00a0but they are not at high risk for sudden cardiac arrest,\u00a0according to\u00a0a study published in the\u00a0New England Journal of Medicine.\u00a0The RACER (Race Associated Cardiac Arrest Event Registry) investigators analyzed data from 10.9 million registered participants in marathons and half-marathons that took place in the U.S. during the first decade of this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1,7],"tags":[317,749,1105,1104],"class_list":["post-15309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electrophysiology","category-general","category-prevention","tag-cardiac-arrest","tag-exercise","tag-long-distance-running","tag-marathons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}