AI Article Synopsis

  • Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is essential for screening athletes, particularly those under 40 with symptoms or family histories related to cardiac issues, as well as in follow-up cases of cardiovascular disease.
  • It is a cost-effective imaging tool for assessing heart changes from intense training (the athlete's heart) and for identifying serious conditions that could lead to sudden cardiac death, such as cardiomyopathies.
  • An expert opinion from the Italian Society of Sports Cardiology highlights scenarios for TTE use, differentiating between normal and abnormal heart adaptations, and recommends a standardized dataset for reporting TTE findings in sports cardiology.

Article Abstract

Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is routinely required during pre-participation screening in the presence of symptoms, family history of sudden cardiac death or cardiomyopathies <40-year-old, murmurs, abnormal ECG findings or in the follow-up of athletes with a history of cardiovascular disease (CVD). TTE is a cost-effective first-line imaging modality to evaluate the cardiac remodeling due to long-term, intense training, previously known as the athlete's heart, and to rule out the presence of conditions at risk of sudden cardiac death, including cardiomyopathies, coronary artery anomalies, congenital, aortic and heart valve diseases. Moreover, TTE is useful for distinguishing physiological cardiac adaptations during intense exercise from pathological behavior due to an underlying CVD. In this expert opinion statement endorsed by the Italian Society of Sports Cardiology, we discussed common clinical scenarios where a TTE is required and conditions falling in the grey zone between the athlete's heart and underlying cardiomyopathies or other CVD. In addition, we propose a minimum dataset that should be included in the report for the most common indications of TTE in sports cardiology clinical practice.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2024.132230DOI Listing

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