Misdiagnosis: Why might an athlete be incorrectly diagnosed bradycardia and trea
ID: 3522006 • Letter: M
Question
Misdiagnosis:
Why might an athlete be incorrectly diagnosed bradycardia and treated for this condition? Does an accurate and thorough patient history determine proper diagnosis?
Differential Diagnosis:
What varying specialties might be involved in this differential diagnostic process of the bradycardia and why? Is cranial nerve testing necessary? Define your reasoning.
Precautions:
What precautions should healthcare workers implement when caring for individuals with validated and demonstrated syncope? Should government agencies be notified?
NeurologicalMechanism
This ANS associated disease is a neurological mechanism involving the dysfunction of a major cranial nerve. Identify the cranial nerve and the associated branch of the ANS involved. Define and explain how the cardiovascular system is adversely affected by this ANS division dysfunction.
Explanation / Answer
Bradicardia means decrease in heart rate. This decrease may be due to several reasons , it could be due to conditioning of the heart due to a training period or may be due to some heart disease. When an athelet is trained for long distance running the cardiiovascular system is conditioned in the way that heart rate decreases and the heart take sufficient time to fill the ventricles with blood from lower and upper limbs and then pumps the blood in the whole body. The main aim is to decrease the heart rate in this sort of sports that the heart is trained in such a way that heart rate is low. Otherwise during strenious exercise the increase in heart rate will cause the cardiovascular system to collaspe and the person may die. So, depending on the general notion that that heart rate increases with exercise the athelet can be misdiagnosed with bradicardia.
Yes an accurate and thorough patient history is needed to treat such conditions. The patient history will tell that if that person initially had any heart problem or not and how the person is trained and how the training affected the cardiovascular system of that person . Only a correct patient history is required in this case for appropriate diagnosis.