Preservation of Right Ventricular Function in Middle-Aged Recreational Endurance Athletes.

Endurance athletes (EAs) completing years of sport-specific training present with structural, electrophysiologic, and functional cardiac adaptations. 1 Baggish A.L. Battle R.W. Beaver T.A. et al. Recommendations on the use of multimodality cardiovascular imaging in young adult competitive athletes: a report from the American Society of echocardiography in collaboration with the Society of Cardiovascular computed tomography and the Society for Cardiovascular magnetic resonance. J Am Soc Echocardiogr. 2020; 33: 523-545 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (55) Google Scholar Potential adverse effects of chronic intensive exercise on right ventricular (RV) systolic function have been described 2 La Gerche A. Heidbüchel H. Burns A.T. et al. Disproportionate exercise load and remodeling of the athlete’s right ventricle. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012; 43: 974-981 Crossref Scopus (275) Google Scholar but require further examination. A recent study of young EAs (18-39 years of age) identified age-specific normative values for RV function 3 Bauer P. Tello K. Kraushaar L. et al. Normative values of non-invasively assessed RV function and pulmonary circulation coupling for pre-participation screening derived from 497 male elite athletes. Clin Res Cardiol. 2022; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-022-02099-8 Crossref Scopus (1) Google Scholar but excluded middle-aged athletes, who constitute the largest group of endurance sport participants. 4 Lepers R. Stapley P.J. Master athletes are extending the limits of human endurance. Front Physiol. 2016; 7: 613 Crossref PubMed Scopus (75) Google Scholar Standardized structural and functional cardiac assessment in this understudied middle-aged cohort is relevant in distinguishing pathologic from physiologic functional remodeling. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate resting RV systolic function in a cohort of middle-aged recreational EAs compared with healthy active controls (HCs).