Beat It
The BEAT-IT project was partly financed by the Malta Heart Foundation. It is a joint venture of the Cardiology department at Mater Dei Hospital with the Ministry of Education and Sports. This study was performed by Dr Mark Abela - a cardiologist trainee within the Ministry for Health.
The study group aimed to identify high risk adolescent individuals attending 5th form in all Maltese and Gozitan schools during the 2017/2018 scholastic year. This age cohort was selected to take advantage of the education system in Malta where education is compulsory whilst also offering the potential for a large recruitment sample as students will be clustered in class rooms. This age bracket also ensured that the number of false positive ECGs (peri-pubertal ECG patterns) was kept to a minimum. At the end of the project, 2708 students gave consent, achieving a participation rate of 67.9%. This equates to 0.6% of the whole Maltese population. Such an achievement on a national level has never been reported in the literature. A total of 102 students were referred for secondary evaluation. Following secondary evaluation, 15 individuals (0.5%) were diagnosed with a cardiac condition. Only 9 subjects (0.3%) were diagnosed with a condition linked to SCD, consistent with data reported in the international literature.