heart -thickwall 17 year old

[knut]

My son is 17 years old and activ in basketball and snowboarding and golf. He had pain in his chest at school after lunch and had no physical stress. He has a thick heart wall,and so does  my husband 46 years and his mother 81 years. The doctors are discussing the use of beta -blockers for his condition but he has a low pulse and therefore will  need a pacemaker too.Is this premature? The doctors sAY THAT there was some indication of some type of heart distress the day he had pain since the level of some enzymes were hightened. Should he first quit sports before they start with a pacemaker and beta blockers?

[sugarcane]

First, you need to know if your son has a cardiac condition such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. HCM is characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle, most notably the septum. It can be confirmed with an echocardiogram. Symptoms include chest pain, shortness of breat, and dizziness. Often times, the chest pain is worse with exertion, stress, or after having just eaten. Most competitve sports are eliminated if this diagnosis is confirmed as it is the primary cause of sudden death in young athletes. I have this disease and so does my 14 year old son (there is a 50-50 chance of passing this disease on to each child of a parent with HCM). He had to give up football, basketball, and baseball because of it (he was diagnosed at age 12)but is learning to play golf and loving it and it seems to be a good sport for someone with HCM. We are both on beta blockers, I am also on a calcium channel blocker, and Norpace. I have a pacer/AICD. I believe that a sign of "athletes heart" also is thickness of the heart walls, but the thickness goes away after deconditioning whereas in HCM, it does not. Good luck to you and your son.