Get Up to Speed in Sports Cardiology Care at Virtual CME Symposium

If you’re a provider looking to help your patients with cardiovascular disease safely enjoy the benefits of sports, Cleveland Clinic has a free CME-certified virtual symposium in store that will equip you to give the most current guidance possible.

A Team Sport: Detecting Cardiovascular Disease in the Athletic Heart is the debut offering of a sports cardiology course from Cleveland Clinic focused on the diagnosis and management of individuals with cardiovascular disease and the related effects on athletic training.

The course will be offered by livestream on Saturday, May 14, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET. Registration is complimentary.

Safely reaping the benefits of athletics

“Contemporary pre-participation and return-to-play evaluations are more than just ‘screening,’” notes course co-director Michael Emery, MD, Co-Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Sports Cardiology Center. “They are geared toward a shared decision-making process that allows people to make informed decisions about their lives and enables those with cardiac disease to reap the benefits of sports and exercise at the minimum possible risk.”

“Our virtual symposium will be a chance for all those involved in the care of athletes to gain up-to-date knowledge on the diagnosis and management of adults with cardiovascular diseases and the implications for athletic training,” adds course co-director Tamanna Singh, MD, also Co-Director of the Sports Cardiology Center. “We are bringing together experts in sports cardiology, inherited cardiovascular diseases and sudden cardiac death to examine contemporary issues and the latest developments in this field.”

Symposium content will be delivered by a faculty of at least a dozen Cleveland Clinic experts in various cardiovascular subspecialties — sports cardiology, electrophysiology, cardiovascular imaging, adult congenital heart disease, preventive cardiology — as well as in genetic counseling and primary care sports medicine.

Comprehensive but efficient coverage of essentials

The bulk of the 5.5-hour course is devoted to three 90-minute sessions, each divided into four 15-minute focused presentations followed by a 30-minute panel discussion with questions from course attendees. These sessions explore the following areas:

• Contemporary screening of the athletic heart. This portion covers the essentials of sports medicine evaluation and cardiac screening, the pre-participation evaluation, sudden cardiac death in athletes, and using guidelines and shared decision-making to assess risk of sports participation.
• Etiology, risk stratification and evaluation of common cardiac problems in athletes. Topics here include structural, electrical and acquired cardiac abnormalities as well as congenital heart disease in adult athletes.
• Considerations for return to play. After starting with a discussion of when athletes stand to benefit from genetic testing, this session examines preventive cardiology and cardiac rehab for athletes, the role of heart monitoring in this setting, and the use of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in sports.

Rapid-fire ECG case review

The symposium concludes with a 60-minute session focused on ECGs in athletes. The centerpiece will be a 45-minute, rapid-fire case review devoted to interpreting ECGs in diverse cases presented by expert cardiologists. Course attendees will be encouraged to participate via audience response to apply what they’ve learned.

“The information shared in this symposium will help caregivers identify patients who may benefit from consultation with a sports cardiologist,” says Dr. Singh. “It will also empower them to advocate for patient-athletes to find a safe balance between the implications of cardiovascular pathology and ensuring a healthy, active lifestyle for overall cardiovascular benefit and quality of life.”

For more details and to register, visit ccfcme.org/sportscardiology.

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.