SE Academic Review 2023

22 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

the mother while carrying the child. There is also some detailed biological content which focuses on chromosomal abnormalities and gene defects which will provide my essay with a good degree of academic information. Due to a large section of the study being focused on congenital heart disease the source is very useful and will act as a good foundation to build a section of my essay on. An older source on the subject, was published in 2006 by the US National Library of Medicine National Institute of Health, titled ‘Cost of Cardiovascular Diseases in the UK’ (Luengo‐ Fernández, et al., 2006) and it investigates the cost of cardiovascular conditions on the UK health care system and proportions of deaths between different types of heart disease. The source provides evidence of the high number of cardiovascular-related deaths in the UK and financial strain on the NHS, not to mention the emotional effects. The source shows, with evidence, the large scale of the problem. However, as the study was published 15 years ago, the data does not accurately reflect the current status, but the figures still show a general trend and, with some support from newer figures, this article is very helpful. An article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine investigates the ‘Italian Model’ (Vessella, et al., 2020). It states that Italy has a law that requires all professional athletes to have cardiac scans to try and detect underlying heart conditions which could lead to loss of life. The article investigates the model and its effectiveness and proves that mass screening works and can detect cardiovascular heart disease meaning it saves lives. The article is useful, showing lots of data and diagrams and includes the cost of doing the scans. The study only looks at 6,000 athletes, however this number is enough to show the trend that 1.5% of these athletes had CVD. Due to the effectiveness of this model, I would argue that all governments should make the same policy mandatory. This article is therefore useful and relevant to help me directly answer my proposed question giving a comparison with the NHS screening plans.

The second example of where professional sportsmen undergo cardiac screening is in a study done by the Football Association ‘Outcomes of Cardiac Screening in Adolescent Soccer Players’ (Malhotra, 2018). They screened everyone within the FA and found that 0.32 % of athletes had a cardiac disorder which could have caused death. This resource provides useful evidence to support the idea that scanning athletes can save lives. Both articles therefore support my thesis statement that an increase in cardiac scanning would directly save lives. They show that professional sportsmen are scanned which provokes the question of whether it is morally right that only professional sportsmen can access heart scans easily. This provides the opportunity for me to debate another aspect in my essay. The Atrial Fibrillation Journal released a lengthy and very detailed article including investigations into the health of several athletes (Bickel, et al., 2019). In this article they explain that heart screening has detected life-threatening complications. On the other hand, this article also informs us of cardiac deaths that occurred where no testing or screening had been done. This source is very useful as it shows that heart screening can prevent deaths, giving data and detailed findings, providing more evidence. Thus, like the ECB article, this source is highly useful and relevant. After reading general overviews of several heart conditions, the factual article produced by WebMD, titled ‘Congenital Heart Disease Explained’, gave me a more detailed understanding and investigation into the causes, types, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of CVD (Beckerman, 2019). Useful elements of this article include its explanation of symptoms and diagnosis which could be compared to the NHS Long Term Plan, to analyse whether the plan is effective. The University of Rochester Medical Center published an article titled ‘Factors that may lead to a congenital heart defect’ (University of Rochester Medical Center, 2018). The article investigates and explains different causes of congenital defects, including hereditary conditions and the lifestyle of