Clinical InvestigationCardiovascular Findings in AthletesAortic Stiffness and Distensibility in Top-Level Athletes
Section snippets
Methods
From June 2008 to April 2010, 420 Caucasian elite athletes (mean age, 28.3 ± 13.6 years; age range, 18–40 years) and 240 healthy controls were referred to the Sports Medicine Ambulatory Service of Monaldi Hospital (Naples, Italy) for cardiovascular preparticipation screening9 and afterward to our echocardiographic laboratory for the purposes of the present study. Among these 420 athletes, 360 had been previously involved in our previous study of the effects of competitive sport training on
Results
Clinical characteristics of the study population are described in Table 1. The mean ages were comparable among the groups. In accordance with the effects of different training protocols, ATS at rest showed higher heart rates, BSAs, and SBPs than ATE.
ATS showed a higher sum of wall thickness (septum plus LV posterior wall), LV relative wall thicknesses, and ESSc, while LV end-diastolic volumes were greater in ATE. LV mass index and LV ejection fraction did not significantly differ between the
Discussion
Two-dimensional echocardiography is currently used to evaluate AR morphology and elasticity. Several authors have previously reported larger diameters of arterial and venous conductance vessels in athletes compared with sedentary individuals, even after normalization for BSA.6, 7, 20, 23 In the present study, first, we have confirmed that AR diameters are significantly greater in ATS compared with age-matched and sex-matched ATE, even if significant AR dilatation and aortic regurgitation proved
Conclusions
AR diameters and stiffness were significantly greater in ATS, while aortic distensibility was higher in ATE compared with age-matched and sex-matched healthy controls. In particular, the lower proximal aortic compliance observed in ATS was associated with higher resting brachial pulse pressures and higher indexes of LV afterload. The clinical implications of these findings with regard to cardiovascular risk warrant further investigation.
References (40)
- et al.
Outer limits of the athlete’s heart: the effect of gender and relevance to the differential diagnosis with primary cardiac diseases
Cardiol Clin
(1997) - et al.
Morphology of the “athlete’s heart” assessed by echocardiography in 947 elite athletes representing 27 sports
Am J Cardiol
(1994) - et al.
Association between left ventricular structure and cardiac performance during effort in two morphological form of athlete’s heart
Int J Cardiol
(2002) - et al.
Biventricular myocardial adaptation to different training protocols in competitive master athletes
Int J Cardiol
(2007) - et al.
Aortic root dimensions in elite athletes
Am J Cardiol
(2010) - et al.
Left ventricular myocardial velocities and deformation indexes in top-level athletes
J Am Soc Echocardiogr
(2010) - et al.
Clinical applications of arterial stiffness; definitions and reference values
Am J Hypertens
(2002) - et al.
Left ventricular mass and body size in normotensive children and adults: assessment of allometric relations and impact of overweight
J Am Coll Cardiol
(1992) - et al.
Left atrial volume index in highly trained athletes
Am Heart J
(2010) - et al.
Comparative accuracy of Doppler echocardiographic methods for clinical stroke volume determination
Am Heart J
(1990)