“…As demonstrated by Bakken and colleagues,19 in a large cohort of professional football players, the majority of athletes presented with at least one current health condition and one in three with a musculoskeletal condition requiring some form of follow-up. Other potential benefits of regular health examinations include establishing rapport between the medical team and the athlete, reviewing medications and supplements to avoid inadvertent doping, establishing a performance baseline for the athlete in the healthy state, and, in some settings, to satisfy the medicolegal duties of care 37. Nevertheless, the IOC consensus statement concluded that large-scale population-based studies are needed to evaluate the components of history and examination that can be used to identify athletes at risk, intervene and change outcome, and recommended that programmes on PHEs be set up and conducted as research projects.…”