Putukian, Margot

ABSTRACT The Team Physician Consensus Statement delineates qualifications, duties, and responsibilities of the team physician and provides guidelines to individuals and organizations in selecting team physicians. These delineations and guidelines provide a foundation for best practices in the medical care of athletes and teams. The team physician’s education, training, and experience uniquely qualify them to provide the best medical care for the athlete. This document is not intended as a standard of care and should not be interpreted as such. It is only a guide and, as such, is of a general nature, consistent with the reasonable, objective practice of the healthcare profession. Adequate insurance should be in place to help protect the physician, the athlete, and the sponsoring organization. This document was originally developed as the first in the team physician consensus series, representing an ongoing project-based alliance of the major professional associations concerned about clinical sports medicine issues. The organizations are as follows: American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, American College of Sports Medicine, American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, and the American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine.

The diagnosis and management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in competitive athletes represent a fundamental responsibility of the sports medicine community. Following the diagnosis of a CVD in a competitive athlete, it is the responsibility of the sports medicine team to delineate an effective treatment and management strategy that places the health and wellness of the athlete as the primary objective. An essential and often challenging aspect of this process is determining the appropriateness of continued participation ( i.e., “return-to-play”) in competitive athletics. Recently, a joint American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology Scientific Statement delineating sports eligibility supports a more patient-centered care model that supports shared decision making for clinicians and their patients/families. The present document was written to summarize the changing sports cardiology landscape with an aim of providing the cardiology and sports medicine communities with some practical approaches to eligibility decision making for competitive athletes with heart disease.