Soccer stadiums and other sports arenas need to improve safety to deal with heart attacks suffered by spectators, and emergency and CPR services should be mandatory at major events, concludes a report from Mats Börjesson, associate professor of cardiology at Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy.
Börjesson studied 190 soccer teams and 187 stadiums in ten EU nations from 2005-06, and his recently released findings show that over 25 percent had no defibrillator and many had not instigated CPR training. His report involved 45 million spectators, and these accounted for 77 heart attacks during games, or in betting terms, about one in 600,000 odds of tragedy.
“Inadequate arrangements are due to a lack of attention being paid to safety procedures, rather than because of financial constraints," said Börjesson, who is a club doctor for the Gothenburg premier division team and the Swedish women’s soccer team. He added that he examined only soccer, which is the biggest and best financed sport in Europe, and that the situation may be even worse for other sports.