Ad Disclosure
Report: ‘Reassuring’ study shows small percentage of B1G athletes have myocarditis
Published:
According to a new study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, less than 1 percent of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 last season have clinical myocarditis.
Thirteen Big Ten schools participated in the study, which produced 1,597 student-athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 and then underwent a four-step, return-to-play cardiac evaluation. Of those student-athletes, nine of them were shown to have clinical myocarditis. Twenty eight other athletes were found to have subclinical myocarditis.
According to Dermot Phelan, the director of sports cardiology at Atrium Health in Charlotte, this is positive news.
“The other piece of info that is really reassuring is, with all these data sets of over 5,000 athletes, we haven’t seen adverse events in athletes. We haven’t seen sudden cardiac deaths. That really applies worldwide,” Phelan told Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger this week.
Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, was one of the main reasons the Big Ten initially decided to cancel the 2020 football season last August.
According to Dellenger’s report, Big Ten officials and doctors are now deciding whether or not to conduct cardiac MRI’s on athletes who tested positive for COVID-19.
Spenser is the news manager at Saturday Road and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.