Cardiac Events in World-Class Athletes: An Internet-Based Study

PurposeThis study aimed at assessing the prevalence of adverse cardiac events, as identified in the media, in world-class athletes according to their sex and sports discipline.MethodsAll female and male athletes from 30 individual Olympic sports who ranked in the international yearly top 10 between 2006 and 2018 were included. The name of each of them was associated in a Google search with selected key terms related to heart disease and/or acute cardiac events after their inclusion date. Global and sex-specific adverse cardiac event hazard function lambda were calculated for each sport. Global and sex-specific prevalences of cardiac events were calculated, then compared (Fisher's exact test) between all sports.ResultsFrom the 2471 athletes included, 15 cases of cardiac events (prevalence of 0.61%) were reported; 2 sudden cardiac deaths (0.08%) occurred in male athletes. The other events were related to arrhythmic events (n = 13), mainly supraventricular arrhythmias (n = 9). All surviving athletes were able to continue their career, mostly after ablation procedure. Male endurance athletes accounted for seven events, among which three events occurred among short-distance triathletes. Events among women were comparatively rare (n = 4), and all were observed among short-distance triathletes.ConclusionsA relatively unexpected high prevalence of cardiac events in endurance elite athletes was observed as compared with other sports, mainly, in short-distance male and female triathletes. This raises the question of particular cardiovascular constraints in this discipline and underlines the urge of international longitudinal follow-up studies in these kinds of athletes.

Automated summary

This study aimed to assess the prevalence of adverse cardiac events in world-class athletes according to their sex and sports discipline. The study found a relatively high prevalence of cardiac events in endurance elite athletes, especially in short-distance triathletes among both male and female athletes.