WAUKESHA, Wis. - - GE Healthcare, a division of the General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), and the Olympic Committees from the U.S., Italy and China, have collaborated on a new clinical study to examine athletes' hearts in an effort to gain new insights into techniques for diagnosing and treating heart disease.

"This study is the first-of-its-kind to investigate the cardiovascular effects of rest and activity of both short- and long-distance athletes who follow fundamentally different training regimes," explained research leader Malissa Wood, MD at Massachusetts General Hospital and researcher at Harvard Medical School. "Past research has shown that abnormalities can develop in endurance athletes' hearts after exercise. Such changes like stiffening of the heart are similar to changes found in the earliest phases of coronary heart disease. We hope that the findings of this study will allow physicians to use new methods to more precisely diagnose and follow the treatment of heart disease and heart failure in everyone from Olympic athletes to the patients we see every day."

The cardiovascular study is an initiative of GE Healthcare as part of GE's TOP sponsorship of the Olympic Games through 2012. GE Healthcare is providing the world's most advanced miniaturized ultrasound systems at the Torino Games. These systems - the Vivid i for cardiovascular assessment and the LOGIQ Book used primarily for musculoskeletal screening - are providing sports medicine professionals with a means to track overall cardiac and musculoskeletal fitness of an athlete over the course of their training regimen and also to ensure advanced healthcare to the athletes at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games.
Ed Ryan, Director of Sports Medicine, United States Olympic Committee, said, "The ability to learn more about heart capacity through the cardiovascular research will be a huge advantage to U.S. Olympians and hopefuls in their training and competition."

"As athletes, we are constantly trying to learn more about our bodies, so we can push ourselves to get the most out of training and competition. Being part of a sports science program like this one, which is on the cutting edge of heart research, is an amazing opportunity," added Apolo Anton Ohno, U.S. Olympic short track gold medalist and current world champion.

Currently, many professional sports organizations and Olympic teams undergo regular cardiovascular screenings to understand their cardiovascular health and assess risk factors for sudden cardiac death. GE Healthcare supplies portable cardiovascular technology for the sports medicine industry around the world, including professional soccer teams in Spain, Norway and Germany and public sporting events such as the Boston Marathon to make cardiovascular health screening quick, easy and readily available anywhere where athletes may be and to provide valuable information about the athlete's overall health prior to any physical exertion activity.

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