[Pre-competition health screening of young high-level athletes]

The unexpected death of an athlete during the practice of his sport is generally an event largely covered by the newspapers. It raises the problem of screening the athletic population in the aim to disclose anomalies (generally cardiac in origin) that predisposes to sudden death during exercise. In young people, most of these episodes are due to cardiac disorders that can be detected before initiation of the training program. The low prevalence of these disorders, the large number of people to screen and the cost of the examinations however appear to be limiting factors for this type of mass screening. Despite this notion, a scheme of a screening program is proposed in order to prevent as much as possible the occurrence of sudden death in young athletes.