This post was authored by John Vyselaar, MD, member of the ACC’s Sports and Exercise Cardiology Section.

Sports cardiology is an emerging area of cardiovascular care. It is an exciting time to be involved in this developing field. This is true not only in the U.S., but also internationally.

As a Canadian cardiologist and international member of the ACC, I have been surprised by how similar some aspects of medical practice can be regardless of jurisdiction, whereas others can be quite different. The clinical practice of medically treating patients seems pretty much the same everywhere. Certain things like access to medications or the units you use to measure your lab values (mg/dl vs. mmol/L) may differ slightly, but physicians everywhere still care about using the right anticoagulant or accurately determining a glomerular filtration rate. On the other hand, the practical and financial aspects of actually getting patient care done can vary widely. The impact of single vs. multi-payer insurance, socioeconomic factors, and litigation risk make some aspects of practicing medicine in Canada very different from the U.S. and other jurisdictions.

The same is true for sports cardiology. Scientifically we are roughly in the same place here in Canada. The tragedy of a young athlete who dies while participating in sports shocks us all. How can we prevent this? Does electrocardiography screening work? How often should we do it and what else should we do? We don’t know for sure. And globally, we all agree that we need to collect more data, to distinguish normal athletic variations from true pathology.

Like medical practice as a whole, the practical details differ between Canada, the U.S. and other countries. Much of what makes sports cardiology distinctive here is the nature of the sports we enjoy and the size of our market. Our most popular sport is hockey, and it is by far the most lucrative. Rates of youth and adult recreational sport participation here are quite high. However, while we have outstanding athletes, we have a small total population, and our university and professional sports teams (except hockey) earn significantly less revenue than those in the U.S. or Europe.

Partly for these reasons, sports cardiology is in very early stages here in Canada. I was fortunate to become involved early in my five year career with two local professional teams. I have since expanded to also care for Olympic athletes and high-level university athletes. There are only a handful of us doing this work across what is geographically the second-largest country on earth! As a result, working in this area has at times made me feel somewhat isolated professionally. Dealing with cardiovascular issues in high-level athletes requires its own specific set of competencies, and I do not have local colleagues to discuss difficult cases with or cover for me if I am unavailable.

I have found ACC membership, and active involvement in the ACC’s Sports and Exercise Cardiology Section, invaluable for this sort of discussion. The annual Sports Cardiology Summit is a wealth of information and advice, and is full of informal networking opportunities that help to connect geographically isolated individuals such as myself with a much larger collaboration of cardiologists and other experts in this field. Being involved has enabled me to care for athletes with confidence and build a successful practice in sports cardiology. I cannot overstate how much the connections I have made through the Section have helped me, and I highly recommend membership in the Section to anyone interested in this emerging discipline.

This post is part of a series of posts from the ACC’s Sports and Exercise Cardiology Section. For more information about the Section, click here. Follow the sports and exercise cardiology conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #SportsCardio.

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