MiscellaneousThree-Dimensional Echocardiographic Characterization of Left Ventricular Remodeling in Olympic Athletes
Section snippets
Methods
From January to July 2008 and from April to June 2009, we evaluated 515 consecutive Olympic athletes, members of the Italian national team, selected for participation in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2009 Pescara Pan-Mediterranean Games. All athletes were evaluated at the Institute of Sports Medicine and Science during period of intensive training.
According to our protocol, each athlete underwent physical examination, rest and exercise 12-lead electrocardiography, and 2-dimensional and
Results
Demographic characteristics of athletes and untrained controls are listed in Table 1. The distribution of LV end-diastolic volume and mass among male and female athletes is displayed Figure 1, Figure 2. The means and ranges of values in healthy volunteers and athletes according to sport disciplines are listed in Table 2 for men and Table 3 for women.
Athletes had higher LV end-diastolic volumes (157 ± 35 vs 111 ± 26 ml, p <0.001) compared to controls. Subgroup analysis, according to the sport
Discussion
Our study provides original data on LV remodeling patterns and functional characteristics, derived from 3DE, in a unique and wide population composed of elite Olympic athletes engaged in different sport disciplines. We sought to assess the morphologic cardiac characteristics using this technique, which is capable of accurately quantify LV volumes and mass in a fashion similar to cardiac magnetic resonance9, 12, 13, 15, 23; indeed, 3DE proved to be reproducible, relatively low cost, and
References (30)
- et al.
Physiologic limits of left ventricular hypertrophy in elite junior athletes: relevance to differential diagnosis of athlete's heart and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
J Am Coll Cardiol
(2002) - et al.
Prevalence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in highly trained athletes: relevance to pre-participation screening
J Am Coll Cardiol
(2008) - et al.
Morphology of the “athlete's heart” assessed by echocardiography in 947 elite athletes representing 27 sports
Am J Cardiol
(1994) - et al.
Ethnic differences in left ventricular remodeling in highly-trained athletes relevance to differentiating physiologic left ventricular hypertrophy from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
J Am Coll Cardiol
(2008) - et al.
Differentiation of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy from other forms of left ventricular hypertrophy by means of three-dimensional echocardiography
Am J Cardiol
(2008) - et al.
Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiographic quantification of left ventricular volumes: multicenter study for validation with magnetic resonance imaging and investigation of sources of error
JACC Cardiovasc Imaging
(2008) - et al.
Task Force 8: classification of sports
J Am Coll Cardiol
(2005) - et al.
Recommendations for chamber quantification: a report from the American Society of Echocardiography's Guidelines and Standards Committee and the Chamber Quantification Writing Group, developed in conjunction with the European Association of Echocardiography, a branch of the European Society of Cardiology
J Am Soc Echocardiogr
(2005) - et al.
Usefulness of left ventricular systolic dyssynchrony by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography to predict long-term response to cardiac resynchronization therapy
Am J Cardiol
(2009) - et al.
Relation between training-induced left ventricular hypertrophy and risk for ventricular tachyarrhythmias in elite athletes
Am J Cardiol
(2008)