Left Ventricular Remodelling of Athlete’s Heart, Irrespective of Load Training Quality

Background : Regular physical exercise determines a progressive increase of the cardiac mass named adaptative hypertrophy. Up to now, two morphological echocardiographic athlete’s heart patterns have been described by Morganroth in 1975: a wall’s thickness predominant augmentation, or a major cavity size chamber’s dimensions in case of prevalent ”static or dynamic” components and no long term data are available. The aim of the study was to follow up by the echo, the impact of the physical training on the heart morphology in a group of elite soccer and rugby players for at least five years. Method: Since January 1993 up to December 2013 a group 250 elite soccer and 114 rugby athletes were examineted :78 soccer and 60 rugby had a follow up of 5 years.They were matched with a sedentary control group. Results: In athletes the LV dimensions and the LVMi were significantly higher than sedentary controls (LVMi : 123.45 ; LVMi: 81.5 vs 94.36 gr/m2 respectively). After five years follow up, the athletes didn’t show any significant modifications of the cardiac dimensions: Left Ventricular Diastolic diameter changes slightly from 52.00 ± mm to 52.90 ± mm; Left Ventricular Systolic diameter increased from 31.58 ± mm to 32.33 ± mm, Left Ventricular Mass index from 120.77 to 121.45 gr/m2 ;p=NS in soccer ; from 50.43 ± mm to 52.22 ± mm; Left Ventricular Systolic diameter increased from 32.51 ± mm to 32.8 ± mm, Left Ventricular Mass index from 81,5 to 87,4 gr/m2 ;p=NS ) and no significant enhancement of the aortic root diameter was observed (Aortic root: from 27.39 mm to 31.64 mm in soccer players ; from 30,68 mm to 30.95 mm) Conclusions: In regularly trained athletes the LV dimensions chamber and LVMi are normally to the upper limits of the normal range. After a five -years -follow-up, the of heart's chambers dimensions maintain size within the normal range, despite to t e upper limits. No significant differences were found among the athletes practicing sports at different workload component, endurance and resistance training. The regular physical exercise induces a mild LV hypertrophy that can be therefore considered an adaptive consequence to stress-exercise.