Europace. 2023 Aug 17:euad255. doi: 10.1093/europace/euad255. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Premature Ventricular Beats (PVBs) in athletes are often benign but sometimes they may be the sign of an underlying disease. We evaluated prevalence, burden, and morphology of PVBs in healthy voluntary athletes and controls with the main purpose of defining if certain PVB patterns are “common” and “training related” and, as such, are more likely benign.
METHODS: We recruited healthy competitive athletes and sedentary subjects who volunteered to undergo a 12-lead 24-hour ambulatory ECG monitoring (24H-ECG), with a training session in athletes. Ventricular arrhythmias were evaluated in terms of number, complexity (i.e. couplet, triplet or non-sustained ventricular tachycardia), exercise-inducibility and morphology.
RESULTS: We studied 433 healthy competitive athletes (median age 27 (18-43) years, 74% males) that were compared with 261 age- and sex-matched sedentary subjects. 86% of athletes and controls exhibited a total of ≤10 PVBs/24-hour, and more than 90% did not show any couplets, triplets or run of NSVT >3 beats. Sex and level of training was not associated to the number of PVBs, which rather resulted to be dependent only to age (p < 0.01). The most frequent morphologies were the infundibular and fascicular ones. In a comparison between athletes versus sedentary individuals, and male versus female athletes, no statistically significant differences were found in PVBs morphologies.
CONCLUSION: The prevalence and complexity of ventricular arrhythmias at 24H-ECG did not differ between athletes and sedentary controls and were not related to type and amount of sport or sex. Age was the only variable associated to an increased PVBs burden. Thus, no PVBs pattern in the athlete can be considered “common” or “training related” (Graphical abstract).
PMID:37589170 | DOI:10.1093/europace/euad255
