Introduction: Intense physical training can induce morphological and functional changes in the heart, leading to 'Athlete's heart'. This can be responsible for adaptive left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), which is sometimes difficult to differentiate from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) with its inherent threat to life. Echocardiography usually allows the diagnosis to be clarified, but in borderline cases it can be insufficient.
Objective: The value of myocardial tissue Doppler (MTD) in the diagnosis of HCM has been highlighted recently. Normal values in athletes have been published, but these series have only studied a small number of athletes in a small number of sporting disciplines.
Methods: Using echocardiography with MTD at the lateral mitral annulus, we therefore evaluated 100 elite athletes from a very wide range of disciplines, in order to obtain a mean reference value for early diastolic Ea velocities.
Results: The peak early diastolic Ea was measured at 18.2 +/- 2.7 cm/s. The E/A ratio was 1.7 +/- 0.4. We found that 75% of the athletes had a value for Ea=17 cm/s, and for 84% of them the E/Ea ratio was correlated positively with the E/A ratio, and negatively with age.
Conclusion: Elite athletes have early diastolic velocities measured with MTD that are higher due to their physical training. This study has allowed a mean reference value to be established for Ea in this specific population, with the potential opportunity to distinguish between LVH and HCM.