Sports-specific features of athlete's heart and their relation to echocardiographic parameters

Chronic physical training may induce morphological and useful functional adaptations which affect all cardiac chambers. Morphological modifications are mainly modest and far from pathologic ones. All these adaptations seem helpful for sport's performance. Hemodynamic and neurohumoral stresses depend on the muscular exercise type performed, static or dynamic. However, sports-specific adaptive cardiac structural changes are yet debated. Actually, it appears that highly trained athletes develop a left ventricular fair combination of cavity dilatation and increased wall thickness. Thus, it is not possible to clearly separate a strength-trained from an endurance-trained athlete's heart. However, this review shows that some specific cardiac adaptations mainly linked to the specific training stimulus may be observed. Dilatation slightly predominates in dynamic endurance-trained athletes whereas increased wall thickness slightly predominates in dynamic resistance- and static-trained athletes. Thus, assessment of athletes' echocardiographic parameters should take into account both sport and training specificities practiced, in terms of quantity and contents.