Health experts have recommended that a Europe-wide heart-screening programme should be introduced to prevent sudden deaths among young athletes in competitive sports.
Yesterday, a report by the European Society of Cardiology called for the screening of athletes to reduce the number of sport-related deaths caused by heart attacks.
Robin Johnson looks at whether such checks should be introduced in the UK.
Watching a group of youngsters tearing around a football pitch, you would think they were the last people in the world likely to suffer with heart problems.
But outward appearances can be deceptive. Health experts believe it is possible that some children and young people who outwardly seem fit, may have undetected heart defects that could lead to fatal cardiac arrests brought on by sport.
Mercifully, such instances of this actually happening are rare, but doctors working in international heart and sports medicine are calling for all youngsters who take part in competitive sport to undergo a heart-screening programme.
Yesterday, a report published by the European Society of Cardiology said screening could pick up potentially life-threatening problems.
It believes screening athletes using an electrocardiogram (ECG) could cut sports-related cardiac deaths in Europe by up to 70 per cent.
An ECG is used to measure the electrical activity of the heart and can pick up problems which would otherwise present no symptoms.
As well as the screening, the society has recommended that every young athlete involved in organised sport should have a rigorous physical examination and a detailed investigation of their personal and family medical history.
There are no estimates on the number of sports-related sudden cardiac deaths in Europe, apart from in Italy, which has operated a screening programme for athletes for 25 years, involving nearly six million young people a year.
Its figures show that the number of people affected is typically two out of every 100,000.
In the UK, a number of high-profile cases have brought the issue to the fore.
Victims include Marc-Vivien Foe, the Premiership footballer and Cameroon international, who died aged 28 when he collapsed during a match in 2003.
Former Wales manager Terry Yorath lost his son, Daniel, in the same way at the age of 15.
For a parent to suddenly lose a child in the prime of their life is an awful thing to bear.
Mick and Janet Sanders, of Melbourne, had to endure that very experience when they lost their 17-year-old on, Matthew, in 1999.
Matthew, who attended Chellaston School, loved sport and what spare time he had was invariably spent doing physical activity, but then tragedy came out of the blue.
A keen footballer, he had just completed a trial for Burton Albion
