Journal article
Ventricular arrhythmias associated with long-term endurance sports: What is the evidence?
H Heidbuchel, DL Prior, A La Gerche
British Journal of Sports Medicine | BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2012
Open access
Abstract
Athletic performance tests the limits of the human body and mind. Awe-inspiring achievements is what makes sports so fascinating. It is well appreciated however that top-level sports may sometimes overtax the body, and can lead to injuries, most notably of musculo-skeletal nature. This paper defends the thesis that the heart can also develop sports injuries at the ventricular level. We will elaborate on our hypothesis, originally put forward in 2003, that intense endurance activities put a particularly high strain on the right ventricle (RV), which over time, may lead to a proarrhythmic state resembling right (or less often) left ventricular cardiomyopathy. This can develop even in the absen..
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Funding Acknowledgements
HH is holder of the AstraZeneca Chair in Cardiac Electrophysiology, University of Leuven. HH received research funding through the University of Leuven from Siemens Medical Solutions. HH is Coordinating Clinical Investigator for the Biotronik-sponsored EuroEco study on health-economics of remote device monitoring. HH is a member of the scientific advisory board of Biosense Webster, St Jude Medical, Siemens Medical Solutions, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bayer and Sanofi-Aventis, and receives unconditional research grants through the University of Leuven from St Jude Medical, Medtronic, Biotronik and Boston Scientific Inc. DP is member of scientific advisory boards for Actelion and Servier. ALG receives a post-doctoral research scholarship from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.