MEDICAL DOCTORS AND DOPING IN SPORT: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCE IN BALKAN REGION

DOPING CONTROL

MEDICAL DOCTORS AND DOPING IN SPORT: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCE IN  BALKAN REGION

Dikic Nenad, Ionescu Anca, Dimitrova Diana, Natsis Konstantinos, Ergen Emin, Suzic Jelena
Balkan  Sport Medicine Association

Introduction. During the last two Olympic games, 5 athletes from the Balkan Countries lost medals and 4 athletes have been found to be doping positive out-of-competition, which included 44% of all positive cases in Sidney 2000, and 20% in Athens 2004.
Objectives. The aim of this study is to examine attitudes and experience of medical doctors from Balkan Countries.
Materials and methods.  A total of 219 medical doctors from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey fulfilled the questionnaire related to doping issues.
Results. During the period of 12 months, 80% doctors have been asked for information about doping agents, 25% of the them have been contacted by athletes for the prescription of doping agents, 14% of doctors think that they should assist athletes who want to use doping and in 27% of the cases the doctors have treated athletes who are using doping due to medical problems. They believe that education is the most effective method for fight against doping and the least effective method is two years ban. They put adolescents and children as a first group which needs to be targeted in a doping prevention.
Conclusion. Hypothesis that athletes are not informed about doping because of poor knowledge of medical doctors is supported. Medical doctors from Balkan region are confused and controversial, but they recognize the need for better education and they want to participate in its prevention. However, although this observation does seem encouraging, their limited knowledge of doping should prompt the introduction of adequate training in this domain.