Tennessee Heart Test Is Credited With Saving Lives
The New York Times
Feb. 29, 2008
By The Associated Press
The mother of Duke Crews is pretty sure Tennessee basketball saved his life. Crews seemed healthy until an echocardiogram he received as part of health screenings administered to all Tennessee athletes found the forward had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition blamed for the sudden death of more than a hundred athletes each year. "If they hadn't done it, no one would have ever known he had it," Crews's mother, Louise Poindexter, said. "There's a possibility they did save his life." Tennessee is one of only a few universities that routinely perform echocardiograms on all athletes. A fan last year volunteered to provide the screenings at no cost.
The expense of such a test -- between $500 and $1,500 for each athlete -- is why some universities do not offer it to all athletes, said Dr. Douglas Zipes, the past president of the American College of Cardiology and a distinguished professor of medicine at Indiana University.
Read the entire story at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/sports/ncaabasketball/29heart.html
Learn more about the IU School of Medicine at: http://www.medicine.iu.edu/
