Free heart screenings Wednesday for HS athletes
About 100 slots are available for area high school students to be screened Wednesday night for life-threatening heart defects.
The free screenings will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. at The Heart Center — 2500 NE Neff Road — as part of an initiative by the Children’s Heart Fund, a program of the St. Charles Foundation.
Students must sign up in advance by calling 541-706-2787.
Each student will receive an electrocardiogram (EKG) — a test that checks for problems with the heart’s electrical activity — and an echocardiogram, or ECHO, a test that uses sound waves to create a moving picture of the heart.
The screenings help detect five conditions:
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Long QT syndrome
• Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome
• Aortic aneurysm
• Aortic stenosis
The Children’s Heart Fund hopes to provide 1,000 heart screenings to Central Oregon high school athletes throughout the year.
