Chances of suffering from sudden cardiac arrest while middle-aged adults do sports activities are less. Therefore, American researchers said that these people can exercise without worrying about it.

The finding is based on a review of 1,247 sudden cardiac arrest cases involving men and women aged 35 and 65. After carrying out the review, the researchers found that 63 cases or 5% were linked with sports activities.

In the two-third cases, patients had already faced cardiovascular disease or symptoms before the sudden cardiac arrest. When all the sudden cardiac arrests were compared, sports-associated cases were most witnessed (87% versus 53%) and involved CPR (44% versus 25%) and a cardiac rhythm disturbance (84% versus 51%).

The researchers said that rate of survival to hospital discharge was higher in the case of sports-associated sudden cardiac arrests. In fact, people in the sports-associated groups were likely to be in public and received bystander CPR.

It was also found that men had a higher incidence of sports-associated sudden cardiac arrest in comparison to women.

“Our study findings reinforce the idea of the high-benefit, low-risk nature of exercise in middle age and emphasize the importance of education to maximize safety”, said the study’s senior author Sumeet Chugh.