It is just a game: lack of association between watching football matches and the risk of acute cardiovascular events.
Résumé
Background: The role of trigger factors in acute cardiovascular events has been much studied in the last few years. A recent study analysed changes in the rates of cardiac emergencies in Bavaria (Germany) during the last Football World Cup. The authors reported a 2.7-fold increase in the incidence of cardiac emergencies in the 12 hours before and after football matches involving the German team, and sparked the debate on the necessity of the introduction of ad-hoc cardiovascular preventive measures. Methods: We studied 25159 hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) among the Italian population during three international football competitions: World Cup 2002, European Championship 2004 and World Cup 2006. Poisson regression was used to estimate the relative risk of hospital admission for AMI on the days when football matches involving the Italian team were disputed, compared with the other days of the three competitions. Furthermore, we reviewed the available published studies regarding the association between football matches and the risk of cardiovascular events. Results: We did not find an increase in the rates of admission for AMI on the days of football matches involving Italy in either the single competitions or in the three competitions combined (relative risk: 1.02, 95% confidence interval 0.98-1.05). We identified ten studies published on this topic. With the exception of the recently published German study and two small Swiss studies, all relative risk estimates were between 0.7 and 1.3. Conclusions: The cardiovascular effects of watching football matches are likely to be, if anything, very small.
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
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