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Some of the world’s leading experts in road race medical organisation and safety gathered in Tokyo on Saturday (20) for the IAAF’s first Race Emergency Medicine Workshop.
It was the first of a range of workshops organised by the IAAF Health and Science Department in collaboration with the International Institute for Race Medicine (IIRM) and attracted Japanese health professionals that are either linked to the Japanese Athletics Federation (JAAF) or the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee.
Treatment of runner sudden cardiac death, heat stroke diagnosis and management, dehydration and hyponatremia were the main focal points of this workshop, which had more than 30 attendees.
JAAF road race doctors implemented special preventive measures several years ago that led to an exceptional survival rate of 97.7% in sudden cardiac arrests, making Japanese road races the safest in the world. Fumihiro Yamasawa, Medical Director of the Tokyo Marathon Foundation, gave practical examples from a high-level running event.
Yuri Hosokawa, an assistant professor at Waseda University, then gave a talk on heat stress and heat-related illnesses, while IIRM executive director Chris Troyanos covered dehydration and hyponatremia in his presentation. He was followed by Andre La Gerche, the head of sports cardiology at the University of Melbourne, who spoke about the cardiovascular effects of endurance exercise, and finally Shogo Tabata gave a talk on rhabdomyolysis and other endurance exercise related diseases.
As of 1 January 2020, race medical directors of IAAF Label races will be required to attend these workshops every second year to ensure a continuing medical education in the area of endurance running medicine.
The next workshops will be held in Doha on 5 October, Valencia on 9 November and Singapore on 28 November.
IAAF
