With American football’s Super Bowl just around the corner, it seems timely to examine a report of
cardiovascular events
that occurred during the 2006 World Cup Soccer Championship in Germany. The German team placed third in this Championship, having lost to the Italian team (the eventual winners) in the semifinals. Investigators compared the coronary events (acute coronary syndromes, symptomatic arrhythmias, cardiac arrests, or therapeutic discharge of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators) that occurred in the greater Munich area during the games, before and after the games, and during the corresponding time periods in prior years (the control period). They included only patients who resided in the area to avoid shifts due to population changes in connection with the tournament.
The
incidence of coronary events during matches involving the German team was 2.66 times the incidence during the control period. This incidence was 3.26 times that of the control period in men, but only 1.82 times that of the control period in women (
P<0.001 for both sexes). The number of events increased fourfold in patients with a known history of coronary artery disease and doubled in those without known coronary disease. There was no increase during the World Cup games that did not involve the German team.