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CMAJ • April 30, 2002; 166 (9)
© 2002 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

Letters
Correspondance

The good old hockey game

Mitchell Shulman

Emergency Department, Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Que.

Your recent report on the cardio-vascular effects of recreational hockey1 touched a nerve. Three years ago, one of the guys in our league had a myocardial infarction while playing. It scared us all, and a few weeks later I went onto the ice — not one of us stopped playing — wearing a heart-rate monitor under my gear.

I was able to monitor my heart rate continuously, and what I found closely paralleled the findings in this paper. I was astounded to see that my heart rate, which is normally around 80 when resting, shot up to 188, which is well above my cardiovascular exercise range.

Did this stop me from playing, or cause me to modify my on-ice activities? I am Canadian, eh, so of course not. But what it did do was reinforce my commitment to off-ice conditioning. Press coverage of the CMAJ study failed to reinforce one of its key points: that we can continue playing recreational hockey but we should be in the proper physical shape to do it wisely and safely.

The message for me was that in our attempts to recapture the glory of our youth we may forget to apply to ourselves the wisdom and common sense that our profession expects us to use with our patients.

Mitchell Shulman Emergency Department Royal Victoria Hospital Montreal, Que.

Reference

  1. Atwal S, Porter J, MacDonald P. Cardiovascular effects of strenuous exercise in adult recreational hockey: the Hockey Heart Study. CMAJ 2002; 166 (3):303-7.[Abstract/Free Full Text]




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