Athletes Get Inside Look at Heart of the Matter

At first glance, it looked like something from a late-night horror flick, something you’d see in your dreams thanks to that midnight snack of moo goo gai pan. It seemed a faceless, lurching mass. Like the Blob, with hiccups.

But it was actually a heart--Tony Lomeli’s heart--beating away on a computer monitor during the American College of Cardiology convention this week at the Anaheim Convention Center.

“Weird!” said Lomeli, a junior football player at Cypress High, keeping a close eye on the monitor. “I never thought I’d see the inside of my own heart.”

Neither did the 12 other Cypress High athletes who participated Tuesday in the Toshiba Heart Scan, a national study on heart abnormalities in high school athletes. The study, which will test 2,000 male athletes from high schools around the United States, was developed by cardiologists to help identify underlying heart conditions that can lead to sudden death.

Cypress Athletic Director John Selbe said he was happy to volunteer a dozen or so of his athletes for the study. And the athletes, all football players, were happy to oblige.

“Hey, it got us out of class,” said one.

“It got us a free T-shirt,” said another.

It also might save a life.

Dr. Timothy Hart, director of nuclear medicine at the Iowa Heart Center and research director for the study, said initial findings were surprising. Of the first 1,000 athletes tested, 3% have shown to have some form of congenital heart disease. In the general population, Hart said, the rate is less than 1%. And while many of the athletes found to have heart abnormalities were treated with medicine, a few required surgery. Most of those, Hart says, are already back playing sports.

Doctors and technicians involved in the study do so on a volunteer basis, Hart says. Most of the screenings take place on weekends so cardiologists are able to donate the use of their high-tech ultrasound scanners, which cost about $150,000 each. The idea for the study originated after the death of Loyola Marymount basketball player Hank Gathers in March, 1990. More needs to be done, Hart says, to learn how to detect whether highly conditioned athletes are at risk for sudden death.

At Tuesday’s testing, few of the Cypress players seemed to know why--aside from free T-shirts and time away from class--they were there, or what the screening would entail. Perhaps that was for the best. An person should be fairly relaxed while undergoing such a test. Finding out that you’re a guinea pig for research on sudden death could play havoc with your heart rate.

The test starts with a routine questionnaire--height, weight, family history of heart disease. An electrocardiogram is run on each athlete, and then he is set up for an ultrasound. Various angles of the cardiac region are scanned to check each valve and chamber of the heart. Walls of main arteries feeding into the heart, as well as the heart walls themselves, are checked for holes or leakage. The scanner also emits sound representative of blood flowing through the heart (kind of a squooosh-squooosh, like the sound of walking barefoot through deep mud), and the monitor displays different colors to show direction of blood flow.

“In the old days, good ol’ Doc Jones just put on a stethoscope and listened to your heart,” said Richard Swensson, a director of clinical cardiology at UCI Medical Center and the director of Tuesday’s screening. “This is like a modern-day stethoscope.”

Swensson pointed to the monitor, the heart of Cypress freshman Ricky Kim on display.

“See that? We’re now looking right down the barrel of the aortic valve,” Swensson said. “See, it looks like a Mercedes-Benz symbol, but upside down?”

It looked more like a peace sign to me. But who was I to say? Besides, my turn was next.

Peg Knoll, a sonographer for 15 years, hooked me up to the EKG. She gave me a look.

“Did you know you have an irregular heartbeat?” she said.

I considered faking a heart attack on the spot, just for grins.

Yes, I said. I’ve been told that before.

After a good half-hour of watching my heart pump away on the screen, the test was over. I could see Peg had something to tell me.

“It looks like you have mitral valve prolapse,” she said.

Mitral valve prolapse? I envisioned bypass surgery. Quadruple bypass surgery. A brand new heart donated by . . . a pig! A panic attack was taking over my body.

Later, Hart told me I probably shouldn’t worry. Mitral valve prolapse--also known as “floppy valve syndrome”--is common in young women, he said. Especially runners. Get it checked out, though, if you want peace of mind.

Have to admit I was fairly relieved.

Enough to sprint all the way to my car.