Myocarditis Was A Game Changer for Big Ten, Pac-12. How Will it Impact SEC, ACC, Big 12?
When the Big Ten announced on Tuesday that it was shutting down its football teams for the 2020 season, it was widely reported that one reason was the appearance of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be caused by a number of different viruses, including COVID-19.
Myocarditis can affect the heart’s ability to pump blood and maintain a healthy rhythm. If left untreated it can cause heart failure and sudden cardiac arrest according to the Mayo Clinic website.
CBSSports.com reported that as many as 15 Big Ten football players were left with myocarditis after being diagnosed with COVID-19. That fact, plus the impassioned Facebook posting by a mother of an Indiana player who was struggling with a COVID-related heart issue, was a significant factor that led to the timing of the Big Ten’s decision.
As expected, the Pac-12 followed the Big Ten in shutting down its football programs. That left the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 as the remaining Power Five schools that will attempt to start the 2020 season on time.
The question is, with this new element of the virus now a part of the medical narrative, can those three conferences get to the starting line?
More simply put: Will myocarditis and the challenges of diagnosing it force the final three Power Five conferences to drop out?
Not all doctors agree on how this will ultimately impact the conferences that still want to play football this season. Obviously, the medical people advising the Big Ten and Pac-12 felt it was serious enough to shut down football. While myocarditis is rare in the general population, a recent German study of 100 patients who had recovered from COVID-19 found cardiac involvement in 78 patients and ongoing heart inflammation in 60 patients.
While this is considered a small sample size, the study concluded: “These studies indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19.”
Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infection disease specialist at Duke, chairs the ACC’s Medical Advisory team. Earlier this week Wolfe said that after combing the data, he thought that football could be played safely. He said doctors have learned how to manage the risk.
“We believe we can mitigate it down to a level that makes everyone safe,” he told the Sports Business Journal. “Can we safely have two teams on the field? I would say yes. Will it be tough? Yes.”
Dr. Robert Hoff, a cardiologist in Atlanta, said that there is range of testing for myocarditis that can be done immediately when a player tests positive for COVID-19. There is a blood test, hsTroponin, which is widely used for measuring heart damage.
A negative finding on this blood test, “makes the diagnosis of acute myocarditis significantly less likely,” according to a May report in “Heart Rhythm,” the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society.
Entire article:
https://www.si.com/college/tmg/tony-barnhart/myocarditis
'It's a F------ Mess': How and Why Football Conferences Are Arriving at Opposing Medical Conclusions
How is it that the Big Ten and Pac-12 deemed it too unsafe to play this fall based on medical experts, but others are pressing on?
The first thing to pop into Greg Stewart’s mind was an anxiety-filled question.
Why did they shut down?
This was Tuesday, a historic day in college football, when storied college conferences, the Big Ten and Pac-12, announced the cancellation of fall football. Stewart, the team doctor at Tulane, doesn’t exactly remember where he was or what he was doing. He does, however, remember what he said internally.
“Is there something that they know that we don’t?” asks Stewart, the American Athletic Conference’s lead COVID-19 medical chief. “When someone in the Power 5 shuts down, I need to understand the why. If it’s something we haven’t thought about, then that’s important. It’s not a resource thing, so what is it?”
The data, aside from variations in regional virus case numbers, is virtually the same. For the most part, schools are adhering to the same testing, quarantine and mitigation protocols. In fact, COVID-19 numbers on many teams seemed to have leveled off over the last several weeks. Some programs had even started fall camp—without much issue—and many others were easing into a more normal preseason practice regimen.
The Big Ten, just six days before the shutdown, had announced its 2020 schedule, and the Pac-12 had released its conference-only slate just five days before that. When they both pulled the figurative trigger on a 2020 fall football season, the dominoes that many expected to follow—the Big 12, then the ACC, then everyone else—never toppled.
While the medical boards advising the Big Ten and Pac-12 recommended halting activities, similar medical panels for the other six conferences supported those leagues plowing ahead. There were sparring statements from each side. “In my view, no reasonable-minded individual could have listened to the facts presented by our medical experts and believed that we had any other option at this time,” USC athletic director Mike Bohn said in a letter to fans after the Pac-12 canceled its fall season.
That same day, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and his presidents decided to continue toward a fall season. “Reasonable people can disagree on it,” he said. “The Pac-12 and the Big Ten are seeing much of the same information that we're seeing. But our board believes in our scientists and has come to a conclusion that is different and so have the leadership of the SEC and the ACC.”
How is this possible?
A host of medical professionals spoke to
Sports Illustrated in an attempt to answer that question. They include Pac-12 and Big Ten physicians who gave the shutdown recommendation, SEC and AAC medical advisers who favor a march forward, one of the NCAA’s top COVID-19 experts and various independent practitioners.
So what’s the answer to that question? There isn’t
one. There are several. Why two medical boards ruled quite the exact opposite of others, with the same data, in the same country, about the same sport, while performing the same protocols, is not easily explained.
In such a vast nation with differing cultural ideals and local policies, factors include regionalization and politicization. But one of the most pertinent answers to the question? Risk tolerance.
“The other conferences all understand there is a high risk,” says Boris Lushniak, a member of the Big Ten’s COVID-19 advisory group and squarely in the camp against playing a fall season. “They think they can deal with it. Do they have the answer to the unknowns? They really don’t, which means it’s on the spectrum of risk-taking behavior.
“I can’t tell people, ‘You are doing the wrong thing.’ What I can tell people is, ‘You’re doing a risky thing.’”
Entire article:
https://www.si.com/college/2020/08/14/ncaa-football-covid-medical-experts-big-ten-pac-12
