Abstract

Performance-oriented athletic activity produces a variety of functional and morphologic changes in the human heart; the clinical and prognostic importance of these changes are a matter of discussion. In addition, there is an increasing interest in a broad segment of the population involved in competitive sports, and high-performance sports represent a permanent shift to ever more extreme values of human performance. In this discussion, part of which dates back to the early 1960s, the assessement of electrocardiographic (ECG) changes along with tachyarrhythmias and bradyarrhythmias and the associated sudden cardiac death are the major topics of interest. For any cardiologist this discussion is of interest because it includes aspects of the maximum adaptive capability of the otherwise healthy heart. The intention of this article is to document the ECG variants and arrhythmias occurring in active and healthy sportsmen, to define from illustrative but exceptional case reports the progression to the small group of ill sportsmen with an increased risk of sudden death, and to view all of these data with respect to the average patient with organic heart disease. Verf.-Referat