Sports Cardiology

For athletes with arrhythmias, the return-to-play decision should be individualized based on appropriate risk assessment and treatment and the shared decision-making process should be used, according to a new expert statement.

No athlete with a positive test for genetic heart disease but a negligible clinical phenotype had a genetic heart disease-associated death or cardiac event in more than 1,500 person-years of follow-up, researchers reported.

Training-related ECG findings were common and abnormal ECG findings were rare among Women’s National Basketball Association athletes, researchers reported.

Echocardiographic data show that physiological adaptation due to sporting activity can cause increased right heart size for adolescent boys, researchers reported.

When children aged 8 to 15 years were screened for risk for before participating in sports, the diagnostic yield for identifying those at risk was higher in those aged 12 years or older, researchers reported.

PHILADELPHIA — In people with congenital long QT syndrome, vigorous exercise did not raise risk for death or ventricular arrhythmias compared with nonvigorous exercise, according to the results of the LIVE-LQTS study.

PHILADELPHIA — The incidence of sudden cardiac death among National Collegiate Athletic Association athletes decreased over the past 2 decades, researchers reported at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.

Atrial fibrillation is a common arrhythmia that increases risk for stroke, HF and dementia. Although AF risk increases with age, it can also occur in young people with normal hearts, sometimes called “lone AF.”

Recently, there have been a number of cases in which high-profile athletes have had sudden cardiac arrest due to a variety of causes.