Brief Communications
Medical problems detected during Pre-participation Physical Evaluation of school athletes in the Galle District
Authors:
Yakupiti Himan Shashidara De Silva ,
Teaching hospital Karapitiya, LK
About Yakupiti Himan
sports medicine unit
medical officer
Omega Lokuyaddage De Silva,
Teaching Hospital Karapitiya, LK
About Omega
Respiratory medicine unit
medical officer
Sanka Theekshana Thebuwanaarachchi,
Teaching Hospital Karapitiya, LK
About Sanka
Sports Medicine Unit
Medical officer
Sampath Gunawardane,
University of Ruhuna, LK
About Sampath
Department of Physiology- Faculty of Medicine
Professor in Physiology
Harsha Mendis
Teaching Hospital Karapitiya, LK
About Harsha
Orthopaedic Unit
Consultant in Orthopaedic
Abstract
In Sri Lanka, four athletic deaths were reported in 2013. All four deaths took place while participating in school marathon competitions and the victims were teenaged school children. The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education took steps to temporarily remove marathon events from school athletic competitions in 2014. Three more athletic deaths were reported after the marathon events were resumed in 2015 which led to the development of guidelines in conducting Pre-Participation Physical Examination (PPE) for school athletes. There were no further deaths reported since the implementation of these guidelines.
In the present study on 2000 school athletes, 11% had potential problems which, if undetected, may have led to morbidity and mortality. Thirty (1.5%) had cardiovascular abnormalities, 240 (12%) had respiratory and 140 (7%) suffered from musculoskeletal problems. There were no reported school athlete deaths during sports events after implementation of PPE, which illustrates the success of conducting PPE.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
How to Cite:
De Silva, Y.H.S., De Silva, O.L., Thebuwanaarachchi, S.T., Gunawardane, S. and Mendis, H., 2017. Medical problems detected during Pre-participation Physical Evaluation of school athletes in the Galle District. Journal of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, 4(1), pp.E40 1–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/jpgim.8140
Published on
28 Mar 2017.
Peer Reviewed
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