MiDavies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by MiDavies on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the Italian model for screening heart conditions in young people who participate in organised sport.

David Mowat

Last year the United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) reviewed published evidence and literature on the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) relating to a variety of conditions including in young people who participated in organised sport and recommended that screening should not be offered.

Cardiac screening is mandatory in Italy where young people undertake sport. This has resulted in an 89% decrease in mortality of those tested based data published in 2005 from one region in Italy.

There are a number of questions relating to the effectiveness of the Italian programme that are not available in published literature. We are awaiting a response from the Italian Health Minister on behalf of the UK NSC requesting access to the data for the whole of Italy so that the UK NSC could see to what extent the data is representative of Italy as a country overall. The UK NSC will be reviewing the evidence for SCD again in 2018/19 and welcomes any data from the Italian government.