In some places, a shortage of funds, portable ECG machines, or qualified personnel to administer and interpret them (medical technicians, paramedics, nurses trained in cardiac monitoring, advanced practice nurses or nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and physicians in internal or family medicine or in some area of cardiopulmonary medicine) exist.If sudden cardiac death occurs, it is usually because of pathological hypertrophic enlargement of the heart that went undetected or was incorrectly attributed to the benign "athletic" cases. Among the many alternative causes are episodes of isolated arrhythmias which degenerated into lethal VF and asystole, and various unnoticed, possibly asymptomatic cardiac congenital defects of the vessels, chambers, or valves of the heart. Other causes include carditis, endocarditis, myocarditis, and pericarditis whose symptoms were slight or ignored, or were asymptomatic.The normal treatments for episodes due to the pathological look-alikes are the same mainstays for any other episode of cardiac arrest: cardiopulmonary resuscitation, defibrillation to restore normal sinus rhythm, and if initial defibrillation fails, administration of intravenous epinephrine or amiodarone. The goal is avoidance of infarction, heart failure, and/or lethal arrhythmias (ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, asystole, or pulseless electrical activity), so ultimately to restore normal sinus rhythm. Management
Athletes heart is not dangerous for athletes (though if a nonathlete has symptoms of bradycardia, cardiomegaly, and cardiac hypertrophy, another illness may be present). Athletes heart is not the cause of sudden cardiac death during or shortly after a workout, which mainly occurs due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ARVC), two genetic disorders.
It is chemically similar to the anti-cancer drug teniposide, being distinguished only by a methyl group where teniposide has a thienyl. Both these compounds have been developed with the aim of creating less toxic derivatives of podophyllotoxin.The substance is a white to yellow-brown, crystalline powder. It is soluble in organic solvents.It is used in form of its salt etoposide phosphate. History
Etoposide was first synthesized in 1966 and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval was granted in 1983.The nickname VP-16 likely comes from a compounding of the last name of one of the chemists who performed early work on the drug (von Wartburg) and podophyllotoxin. Another scientist who was integral in the development of podophyllotoxin-based chemotherapeutics was the medical pharmacologist Hartmann F. Stähelin. References
External links
"Etoposide". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine. "Etoposide phosphate". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine. "Etoposide". National Cancer Institute. 12 August 2008. "Etoposide". NCI Drug Dictionary. National Cancer Institute.