Tech sports medicine team on forefront of cardiac initiatives

Most of the school's 500-plus student-athletes receive cardiac testing to diagnose or prevent future problems before beginning competition with their respective teams

November 30, 2016

By Jimmy Robertson

BLACKSBURG – Roughly 15 months ago, Ty Outlaw, a basketball player on the Tech men’s squad, walked into the trainer’s room for what he perceived to be a routine physical. In most cases, physicals are routine, but Virginia Tech’s sports medicine staff thankfully never assumes anything.

The staff performed an EKG of Outlaw’s heart. An EKG, or electrocardiogram, measures the electrical readout of each heartbeat. The heart’s internal electric pacemaker generates that heartbeat, which allows the heart to pump blood throughout the body.

Outlaw’s EKG showed abnormalities, which led to more testing – and ultimately led to him missing the season, as a local cardiologist feared that he suffered from hypertensive cardiomyopathy, a disease in which the heart muscle thickens and thus struggles to pump blood through the body.

After a series of tests, Outlaw received clearance to resume basketball activities in June. Some on the outside thus may view the sports medicine staff as having been too cautious with Outlaw, but those on the staff feel that their process to check cardiac health worked beautifully and could easily prevent an unfortunate situation down the road.

“This is a case where that’s a good catch,” said Dr. Mark Rogers, who serves as the football program’s head team physician, though officially works as assistant professor of family medicine and sports medicine at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM). “We can pick up some of those abnormalities on a screening exam when someone is asymptomatic and hopefully prevent worse things down the road.”

Continued enhanced cardiac screening of student-athletes is one of nine strategic priorities, as outlined this past summer by Dr. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, and initiated on Tech’s campus by Mike Goforth, Tech’s associate AD for sports medicine, and Rogers. Those two and the rest of Tech’s sports medicine staff partner with doctors from Carilion, which earlier this fall received contractual rights to provide health care for Tech’s student-athletes. The arrangement makes sense considering the university’s growing partnership – they’ve already collaborated to establish a school of medicine and a research institute – with the Roanoke, Virginia-based health care organization.

Rogers and Goforth team with Dr. Jose Rivero, a local cardiologist who works for Carilion, on cardiac-related matters involving Tech student-athletes, but Tech’s sports medicine team has been conducting EKGs on Tech student-athletes for several years. Every member of the football team and the men’s and women’s basketball teams receives an EKG because studies show that athletes in those sports are at the highest risk for sudden cardiac death.

But the staff offers the testing to any student-athlete – not just in the three headline sports. Any student-athlete with a family history of cardiac-related issues (heart attacks, heart diseases, high blood pressure, etc.) receive an automatic cardiac work-up.

“We’re trying catch things up front that someone may have missed or maybe didn’t even know about,” Rogers said. “Often, in cases of sudden cardiac death in athletes, there are no symptoms that precede it, so hopefully we can intervene ahead of time and try to prevent that. That would be ideal.

“Most of these student-athletes come in, and they’re pretty healthy, but if we can find something that can improve their performance or help them stay safe and healthy, we’d rather intervene now than see it become an issue five or 10 years from now.”

In addition to preventing cardiac issues in the near term, there remains a second component to the Tech sports medicine strategy when it comes to cardiac health – education. The Tech sports medicine team wants to do a better job of educating student-athletes and staff members about the issues and mainly how to prevent them.

Education became an even bigger priority after what transpired this past March. Brian Edmonds, a former fullback in the mid-1990s, died of a heart attack. He was 41 years old.

Education might be able to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

“I think we can do a better job of educating our student-athletes and give them the tools to succeed that will help them become more health conscious when they leave,” Rogers said.

The question then becomes – how do you educate them? The staff wants to take a team approach.

“I’m big on showing them their numbers,” Rogers said. “If it’s an x-ray, I’ll show them the picture. If it’s a lab test, I’ll show them the results. I often give the student-athletes a copy of their results, if they want it.

“I would like for the student-athletes to start their medical home here at Virginia Tech. They can start a file with their medical test results, or other records, hopefully have a solid understanding of these results, and we then take the opportunity to educate them about their health. We can educate them based on that. Are there some lifestyle changes that need to be made? All of our student-athletes are training regularly, so they’re getting the exercise piece, but maybe there is a dietary piece that they need. That’s when we’ll bring in sports nutrition colleagues to say, ‘Hey, instead of eating red meat, you need to eat more fish,’ or ‘Add some more iron-rich foods.’

“So it’s a team approach between athletic trainers, the medical staff, sports nutrition and strength and conditioning. All of these contribute significantly to our cardiac health.”

The sports medicine staff not only wants to educate student-athletes, but also coaches and support personnel. Goforth, in particular, has a vision of expanding the group’s knowledge to people all over campus.

It’s a bold view, but that’s what Virginia Tech has become these days – a campus where people dream big, and then work to make it happen. With a talented and experienced sports medicine team from Virginia Tech Sports Medicine, VCOM and Carilion, that dream could easily come true, thus making Virginia Tech the envy of many nationwide.

“We really want to be ahead of everyone else – and for a lot of stuff, I think we are,” Rogers said. “If we can put some more preventive measures and education measures in place, then at least when our student-athletes are done competing, they’re a step ahead. And if we can take this to those in our campus community, too, then that would make what we’re doing even more special.”

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