Article Text

This article has a correction. Please see:

Download PDFPDF
Original article
Increased left ventricular trabeculation in highly trained athletes: do we need more stringent criteria for the diagnosis of left ventricular non-compaction in athletes?
  1. Sabiha Gati1,2,
  2. Navin Chandra1,
  3. Rachel Louise Bennett1,
  4. Matt Reed1,
  5. Gaelle Kervio3,
  6. Vasileios F Panoulas4,
  7. Saqib Ghani1,
  8. Nabeel Sheikh1,
  9. Abbas Zaidi1,
  10. Matthew Wilson5,
  11. Michael Papadakis1,
  12. Francois Carré3,
  13. Sanjay Sharma1,2
  1. 1Cardiovascular Research Centre, St. George's University of London, London, UK
  2. 2University Hospital Lewisham, London, UK
  3. 3Department of Cardiology, French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). U642, Rennes, France
  4. 4Department of Cardiology, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK
  5. 5Aspetar, Department of Sports Medicine, Qatar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha, Qatar
  1. Correspondence to Professor Sanjay Sharma, Department of Clinical Cardiology, St. George's University of London, Cranmer Terrace. London SW17 0RE, UK; ssharma21{at}hotmail.com

Abstract

Objective To investigate the prevalence and significance of increased left ventricular (LV) trabeculation in highly trained athletes.

Design Cross sectional echocardiographic study.

Setting Sports cardiology institutions in the UK and France.

Subjects 1146 athletes aged 14–35 years (63.3% male), participating in 27 sporting disciplines, and 415 healthy controls of similar age. The results of athletes fulfilling conventional criteria for LV non-compaction (LVNC) were compared with 75 patients with LVNC.

Main outcome measure Number of athletes with increased LV trabeculation and the number fulfilling criteria for LVNC.

Results Athletes displayed a higher prevalence of increased LV trabeculation compared with controls (18.3% vs 7.0%; p≤0.0001) and 8.1% athletes fulfilled conventional criteria for LVNC. Increased LV trabeculation were more common in athletes of African/Afro-Caribbean origin. A small proportion of athletes (n=10; 0.9%) revealed reduced systolic function and marked repolarisation changes in association with echocardiographic criteria for LVNC raising the possibility of an underlying cardiomyopathy. Follow-up during the ensuing 48.6±14.6 months did not reveal adverse events.

Conclusions A high proportion of young athletes exhibit conventional criteria for LVNC highlighting the non-specific nature of current diagnostic criteria if applied to elite athletic populations. Further assessment of such athletes should be confined to the small minority that demonstrate low indices of systolic function and marked repolarisation changes.

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Linked Articles

  • Correction
    BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Cardiovascular Society