Partnership Continues from Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games; Massachusetts General Hospital and Henry Ford Hospital Using GE Ultrasound Technology to Study Top U.S. Athletes in Rowing, Weightlifting, Wrestling, Boxing and Women’s Soccer
CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In preparation for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and the General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), a Worldwide Partner of the Olympic Games, announced today two research programs aimed at demonstrating that health monitoring and early intervention leads to injury prevention and enhanced health and sports performances for athletes.
The first program is a cardiac clinical research study with top U.S. Olympic athletes and hopefuls on the U.S. Men’s Rowing and USA Weightlifting teams while the second initiative will monitor the musculoskeletal health of athletes competing for USA Weightlifting, USA Boxing, USA Wrestling and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. These two studies are continuations from research programs at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games.
“Every day an Olympic athlete spends in rehab is a day lost in training, making earlier injury diagnosis and real-time recovery monitoring crucial for elite performance,” said Dr. Michael Reed, U.S. Olympic Committee Medical Director, Performance Services Division. “It is increasingly important that as a National Olympic Committee, we have the most innovative tools to help predict, diagnose, treat and monitor sports injuries earlier to ensure a quick return to play. It’s my belief that GE’s ultrasound technology will become a standard tool in healthcare for athletes.”
Cardiac Research Program Set to Build Off Results from Torino
A clinical study of USA Weightlifting and U.S. Men’s Rowing, led by Dr. Malissa Wood, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center (MGH) in Boston, will use GE’s Vivid i – an advanced, miniaturized cardiovascular ultrasound system – to examine athletes’ hearts pre- and post- competition to learn more about the function and performance of highly-conditioned hearts.
The study is ongoing for Dr. Wood, who also partnered with the USOC and GE Healthcare by studying the hearts of U.S. Short Track Speedskaters for the Olympic Winter Games in Torino. The results from the study thus far have indicated that there are specific changes in heart function that correlate to different levels of training.
According to Wood and Dr. Michael Picard from MGH, results of their Torino study proved “participation by world-class speedskaters in a vigorous training regimen results in cardiovascular anatomic and physiologic adaptations. These changes, including cardiac chamber dilatation, enhanced ventricular diastolic function and attenuated resting right ventricle systolic function, are likely adaptive and allow for more efficient energy use at rest and a robust response to demands of exercise. In other words, these athletes had an enlargement of the cavities of the heart and better function of the heart compared to others that are the same age and gender.”
In an effort to further confirm results from Torino, the current research program leading to Beijing will study athletes from traditionally recognized high-intensity sports – rowing and weightlifting – and compare differences in heart function and energy use with endurance athletes as well as people from the general population.
“This study aims to evaluate elite athletes’ cardiac adaptation to high-intensity exercise and training by analyzing cardiac response during peak and off-peak training cycles,” said Dr. Wood. “Our work will hopefully grant the sports medicine community with greater insight to the cardiac fitness levels of their athletes, and provide healthcare providers with insight to new, more effective ways of assessing and treating heart disease for the non-athlete.”
GE’s Vivid i ultrasound system offers the functionality and high performance of larger-scale systems, but in a portable and wireless design. The system makes it possible for patients to receive full diagnostic exams anywhere, as opposed to being transported to an imaging lab in a hospital.
Research with USA Weightlifting, USA Boxing, USA Wrestling and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team to Focus on Point-of-Injury Diagnosis
The second clinical study, led by Drs. Marnix T. van Holsbeeck, Tony Bouffard and Scott A. Dulchavsky of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Mich., centers on improving the overall musculoskeletal health of athletes on the field.
Researchers will focus their attention on the hip, shoulder, ankle and knee regions and, similar to efforts in Torino with the U.S Women’s Hockey team, they will investigate whether taking healthy baseline scans of the athletes helps in determining the extent of future sports injuries with greater speed and accuracy. For the Beijing Olympic Games, the Henry Ford investigators want to assess whether changes in ligaments, cartilage and muscle that are seen before the Olympic Games may have an effect on the athletes performances during the games.
According to Dr. van Holsbeeck, ultrasound can highlight problems with structure and with mobility of tissues that no other examination technique can show. In this study, researchers will use GE’s LOGIQ i, a lightweight, portable ultrasound system that enables real-time diagnosis. Designed for a modern, all-digital healthcare environment, LOGIQ i allows clinicians to share information for consultation and to archive results electronically.
“In the Olympic Games, every second counts. Having a tool that can accurately and immediately determine the severity of an injury gives the sports physician the ability to determine if the athlete can continue to compete in time critical situations. It also can be used to guide training and rehabilitation after injuries,” Dr. Dulchavsky said.
“This study empowers athletes and doctors to take a proactive approach with their health, potentially preventing injuries before they even occur. Our ability to use this technology, and to stream the images across the World using the Internet, will be an extremely valuable tool in expanding healthcare capabilities not only during the Olympic Games, but to communities everywhere,” added Dulchavsky.
Both clinical studies are currently underway with initial results expected around the start of the Beijing Games. GE expects to conduct similar athlete research programs in other countries as well.
“Our research and partnerships play an increasingly important role in discovering benefits for patients and revolutionizing athlete medical care,” said Omar Ishrak, president and CEO of GE Healthcare’s Clinical Systems division. “Our work with the USOC, Massachusetts General Hospital and Henry Ford Health Systems plays a key role. GE will continue to further enhance our ultrasound technology to meet the growing needs of patients and their clinicians worldwide.”
About GE and the Olympic Games
As a Worldwide Partner of the Olympic Games, GE is the exclusive provider of a wide range of innovative products and services that are integral to a successful Games. GE works closely with the host countries, cities and organizing committees to provide infrastructure solutions for Olympic Games venues, including power, lighting, water treatment, transportation and security, and to supply hospitals with ultrasound and MRI equipment to help doctors treat athletes. NBC Universal, a division of GE, is the exclusive U.S. media partner of the Olympic Games. GE’s Olympic partnership was launched in January 2005 and continues through 2012.
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
GE Healthcare’s broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 47,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
About the U.S. Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) is recognized by the International Olympic Committee as the sole entity in the United States whose mission involves training, entering and underwriting the full expenses for the U.S. teams in the Olympic, Paralympic, Pan American and Parapan American Games. In addition to being the steward of the U.S. Olympic Movement, the USOC is the moving force for support of sports in the United States that are on the program of the Olympic, Paralympic, Pan American and Parapan American Games.
On the Web
www.usolympicteam.com; www.usocpressbox.org; www.ge.com; www.gehealthcare.com
