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The field of sports cardiology has surpassed many hurdles over the past decades. From initial findings of cardiac enlargement by clinical examinations and chest radiographs, through the better phenotyping of exercise-induced cardiac remodelling (EICR) on electrocardiography, echocardiography and cardiac MRI, our understanding of the spectrum of the athlete’s heart has greatly advanced.
The limits of research on EICR
Prior scientific endeavours have largely focused on describing EICR in healthy athletes and contrasting this with pathological mimics. For example, early studies contrasted the ‘physiological’ left ventricular wall thickening associated with athlete’s heart to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.1 These studies provided some invaluable clinical tools enabling better discrimination of physiology from pathology, although recent observations have questioned the dichotomous separation between healthy ‘physiological’ myocardial hypertrophy and disease.
Several questions exemplify current knowledge gaps and the limits of our understanding of EICR. Why does EICR incompletely resolve on detraining? Why does myocardial scar exist in some of the fittest athletes? Why are arrhythmias more prevalent in ostensibly healthy athletes? Could certain features of EICR predispose some athletes to arrhythmias and thus discriminate between athletes with a lower and higher arrhythmic risk?
Defining the determinants of exercise-induced cardiac remodelling
Despite all the advances, there are persisting uncertainties regarding the determinants and prognosis of EICR. Foremost is the need to dissect …
Footnotes
Collaborators Pro@Heart Consortium: Christophe Dausin, MSc; Kristel Janssens, Jan Bogaert, MD, PhD; Adrian Elliott, PhDf; Olivier Ghekiere, MD, PhD; Caroline M. Van De Heyning, MD, PhD; Prashanthan Sanders, MBBS, PhD; Jonathan Kalman, MBBS, PhD; Diane Fatkin, MD, PhD; Lieven Herbots, MD, PhD; Rik Willems, MD, PhD; Sofie Van Soest, Peter Hespel, MSc, PhD; Piet Claus, MSc, PhD; Mathias Claeys, MD, PhD; Kaatje Goetschalckx, MD; Steven Dymarkowski, MD, PhD; Tom Dresselaers, PhDf; Hielko Miljoen, MD, PhD; Kasper Favere, MD; Bernard Paelinck, MD, PhD; Dorien VermeulenIsabel Witvrouwen, MD, PhD; Dominique Hansen, MSc, PhD; Daisy Thijs, Peter Vanvoorden Kristof Lefebvre, MD; Michael Darragh Flannery, MD; Amy Mitchell, Maria Brosnan, MD, PhD; David Prior, MD, PhD.
Contributors All authors contributed equally to this editorial.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.