Screening for under 14's is possible but there are some issues with screening people who are under 14. The first is that below the age of 14, many people are still about to start puberty – they're prepubertal, and prepubertal individuals usually have immature hearts which may mimic conditions like arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy and the long QT syndrome, resulting in unnecessary false positive results.
Conversely, there are certain conditions such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which may not manifest fully until age 15 or 16. So we may not find anything at the age of 10 or 11 in someone who's got a potentially serious condition. So there's this concern that I have of issuing false positives and even more importantly, false negatives in people aged under 14. We use 14 as a cut off on the assumption that most people at that age are into puberty and we'll be able to provide a correct answer at the end of our screening.
