Beginning next year, the U.S. military is expected to screen all potential recruits for cardiac anomalies under a new program designed to reduce deaths at boot camp and beyond.
The current version of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, expected to pass Congress this month, requires the Defense Department to launch a pilot program by next October to give electrocardiograms, also known as ECGs or EKGs, to anyone who undergoes a military accession screening.
The provision follows a move in 2022 that extended an EKG screening program at the U.S. Naval Academy to the Air Force Academy and West Point. The Naval Academy began conducting the screenings shortly after losing two students to cardiac arrest during a three-week span in February 2020.
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The push to expand cardiac screenings to all potential military recruits came largely from the families of service members who died from heart conditions that might have been detected by an EKG.
Laurie Finlayson and her husband John founded Lion Heart Heroes Foundation in 2014 to raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest after their son, Marine Lance Cpl. David Finlayson, 25, died during a battalion training run in 2013. His autopsy revealed an enlarged heart.
When the Finlaysons learned that David had never received an EKG at his military entrance processing station, or MEPS, they…
