Cardiac function and autonomic cardiac function during a multi-stage cycling event: a brief report
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Published on: February 9, 2016
Vincent Menard1, Anna Barrero1, Thibault Lachard2
1M2S Laboratory, University of Rennes 2, Rennes, France.
Introduction:
Prolonged and repeated exercise performed during an ultra-endurance event can induce general and cardiac fatigue known as exercise-induced cardiac fatigue. Our objective was to find a possible correlation between the cardiac function and the autonomic cardiac function.
Methods:
During a multistage ultra-endurance event, a female well-trained cyclist underwent daily rest echocardiography and heart rate variability measurements to assess the cardiac function and the cardiac autonomic function.
Results:
The athlete completed 3,345 km at 65% of her maximum heart rate and 39% of her maximum aerobic power. A progressive improvement of the systolic function for both the left ventricle and the right ventricle was observed during the event.
Discussion:
Alterations were observed on the cardiac autonomic function with an imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic, but there was no sign of a significant correlation between the cardiac function and the autonomic cardiac function and no signs of cardiac fatigue either. Further analysis should be performed on a larger sample to confirm the obtained results.
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