OCR Text |
Show 'Death While Running' Victims By FUROLD B. LIGON. MD Twenn-five million people in this country are seriously or reasonably engaged in jogging or running. Many of these run- -ners go to practicing physicians physi-cians or cardiologists for physical phy-sical examinations belore embarking on such programs prog-rams expecially marathon aspirants and early middle-agers middle-agers v. ho feel they need some tpe of reasonably vigorous exercise program to stay trim and fit, and to maintain '"good health." IN RECENT years the medical profession has had to focus some special attention on this ne w trend, because of a syndrom-.' called "death while running.' ' Despite the fact that these incidents afe extremely low in occurrence, we feel that, as physicians, we need to render advice to a certain general gen-eral category of people as to the feasi bility and overall safety safe-ty of vigorous physical fitness programs. As the result of an intense study of "death while running" run-ning" victims by Dr. Paul D. Thompson, a Brown University Universi-ty School of Medicine cardiology cardiol-ogy professor, some very helpful help-ful guidelines for physicians have evolved. DR. THOMPSON'S group has concluded that the leading cause of death during exercise is arteriosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) nutu-rally nutu-rally falling more into the middle mid-dle aged set (another cause is heat stroke, more generally distributed we'll talk about this next). Because of the prevalence of CAD in the general popula tion. Dr. Thompson's, lines have arbitrarily: CAD risk factors as: .! terol above 250; 2. C. use; 3. diabetes mellit 4. hypertension. Hesi? males over 4? with tw0. CAD factors and p, to 45 with three or more -, have stress testing i ' being cleared for runV MY OWN vie!,, known CAD exerciser partake of brisk walk -stead. I'm not aw are oi,.' nificant statistics on" while walking!" |