Towards a Multidisciplinary Approach of ECG Screening in Children and Adolescents: A Scoping Review (2005–2025)

TL;DR

This review highlights the lack of ECG screening data for children under 16 and calls for a multidisciplinary approach to distinguish normal from abnormal ECG changes.

Contribution

The paper emphasizes the need for a multidisciplinary approach to improve ECG screening in children and adolescents.

Findings

Only 14 papers were found, showing a lack of data on children under 16 years.

ECG screening measures for children are scarce and require better differentiation between physiological and pathological changes.

Abstract

Background: The reported data on ECG screening are focused on the last two decades. The objectives of this review were bifold: (i) to identify, within a timespan of twenty years, the most recent literature data on cardiac screening in children and adolescents and (ii) to provide data on the procedures used. Methods: Queries were conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases for the time window of 2005–2025. The mesh terms used were “ECG”, “Universal Screening”, “Cardiac Pathologies”, “Heart Rate”, and “Sports Pre-participation Evaluation”. Only research articles and review papers were included. The standard English language filter was used. Successively, only research articles were selected. Results: Data from 14 papers were considered, reflecting the lack of information about subjects <16 years of age. Conclusions: The information on objective ECG screening measures is quite scarce, and it is an urgent need to introduce a multidisciplinary approach to differentiate between ECG physiological changes due to growth and ECG pathological changes due to early pathology.

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