LWearers of a subcutaneous defibrillator are not suitable for professional football in Italy. The Italian Federation It prohibits any player who has this device from competing, as is the case of Christian eriksen. The 29-year-old Danish midfielder was the protagonist of the great scare of the last European Championship after suffering a cardiac arrest in the field during Denmark-Finland on June 12 in the European Championship.
His life was at stake and the player underwent surgery in which a implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) a device connected to the heart by wires and that sends an electrical pulse to correct irregular rhythms.
It thrills to see him, the Inter fans cheering on Eriksen on the first day of preseason
Eriksen he’s still alive, but his football career was over … or so it seemed. Riccardo cappato is the director of the center for clinical electrophysiology and arrhythmology of the Multimedica group in Milan, and has explained the case of Eriksen in the Corriere dello Sport: “In the case of Eriksen the hypotheses are varied. Elements of his medical history and of what was verified by the specialists of the Danish hospital are missing. We do not even have information about the defibrillation that was practiced in the field. Certainly , the cardiogenic crisis was severe. A fibrillation heart block resulting from a sudden, unexpected, severe arrhythmia. Possible causes? Many. One could be pre-existing, never identified, and stable, such as congenital cardiomyopathy or Brugada syndrome, or severe inflammatory myocarditis (mainly due to viruses, such as Covid, which does not appear to affect the heart but then suddenly triggers the arrhythmia), or an electrolyte disturbance. The inflammatory cause, if it can be diagnosed, is for example a reversible cause. ”
This was the drama in Denmark-Finland: Eriksen fell to the grass
Franco Cecchi (University of Florence, specialist in cardiovascular diseases and cardiomyopathy, founder and president of the association of patients with Aicarm cardiomyopathy) also showed his opinion at the Corriere dello Sport.
First we have to know the cause of the heart inflammation and when we are sure of the ailment we can also remove the defibrillator, if this hinders your return to the field. When he arrived at Inter he underwent all the cardiovascular tests. In Italy we are very strict in this area. Everything was fine, as in the English exams until 2019. Now we can only make assumptions because we do not know the results of the tests performed at the hospital in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, there is no coordination between federations and between football clubs. If you could have the medical history of Eriksen, and not just his heart history, you can really make an accurate prognosis “, confessed the doctor Cecchi.