Incidence of cardiovascular events when watching intense football matches – sex differences

Abstract

Introduction

FIFA World Cup represent one of the world's greatest phenomena. The spectators watch the matches of national teams with great emotional involvement. It is well documented fact that emotional stress can be a trigger of unwanted cardiovascular (CV) event.

Aim

The aim of this retrospective study was to determine whether there had been an increase in the number of the emergency admissions for CVD in the Emergency Room and Clinic for Cardiovascular Diseases of the Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital Centre during and after the matches that the Croatian national team played in the FIFA World Cup 2018.

Methods

The hospital’s database was examined for the dates when Croatia played its matches, plus two more days after each match. An unexposed period that included the same dates in 2017 and 2019 was formed.

Results

1093 cases were assessed. The incidence of CV admissions during the exposed period was 1.15 (95% confidence interval [CI]; 1.02 to 1.31) times higher than during the unexposed period. There was a 1.30 (95% CI; 1.1 to 1.54) times higher incidence in women compared to the unexposed period. Arrhythmias and angina pectoris were the CVDs that occurred more frequently in the exposed period.

Conclusion

This study showed that watching Croatian national team's matches and cheering represented an additional risk for a CV incident, especially in women.

Keywords:

• FIFA World Cup
• cardiovascular disease
• number of admissions
• cardiovascular trigger
• arrhythmia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the personnel at the Cardiac intensive care unit, part of the Cardiology department of the Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital Centre for sharing their workspace and making the job of collecting the data as comfortable as possible. Also, we would like to thank the Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital Centre for sharing their database and making this research possible.

Ethics committee approval

This research has been approved by the Ethics committee of the Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital Centre, under the number 251-29-11/1-20-11. All the ethical standards have been upheld in accordance with the instructions of forth mentioned committee, ICH GCP and Declaration of Helsinki.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data used in this research has been gathered from a hospital database and it is protected by a privacy policy. All the gathered data is anonymous and it can be provided by the author upon request.

Author contributions

LMM and ZB contributed to the conception of the work. LMM contributed to the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data for the work. FI and LMM designed a mathematical model for statistycal analasys and contributed to the data organisation and presentation. LMM, ZB and MMD drafted the manuscript. ZB, MMD, LMM and FI critically revised the paper. All gave final approval and agree to be accountable for all aspects of work ensuring integrity and accuracy.

LMM - This author takes responsibility for all aspects of the reliability and freedom from bias of the data presented and their discussed interpretation.

FI - This author takes responsibility for all aspects of the reliability and freedom from bias of the data presented and their discussed interpretation.

MMD - This author takes responsibility for all aspects of the reliability and freedom from bias of the data presented and their discussed interpretation.

ZB - This author takes responsibility for all aspects of the reliability and freedom from bias of the data presented and their discussed interpretation.