ECG and Echocardiographic Findings of Athletes in Bamako—A Study among 227 Footballers

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Background: A cardiovascular assessment is rarely performed among athletes despite more and more frequently reported fatal events. Most of these accidents are of cardiovascular origin. Moreover, data on ECG or Echocardiography are rare in our context justifying our study to assess electrical and echocardiographic pattern among high-level footballer in Bamako. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted in Bamako from April 2015 to March 2016 among high-level footballers aged 14 to 35 years old without distinction of sex with at least 10 hours weekly training since one year. The ECG and echocardiographies were recorded respectively with a 12-lead CONTEC and an ATL 5000 echocardiographic machine. Each ECG record was analyzed by a cardiologist in accordance with the Seattle 2013 criteria and those pathological reviewed by a second cardiologist according to the same criteria and definitively classified as normal (physiological) or abnormal ECG (requiring complementary explorations). A third cardiologist was associated in case of discordance of the first results. The collected data were inserted in a Microsoft Excel sheet and analyzed with SPSS version 20. Chi Square and Fisher statistical tests were used to compare our results. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: We collected data of 227 top footballers with male sex represented in 90.3% giving a sex ratio of 3.04. Means for age, weight, height, body mass index (BMI) were respectively 22 years, 69.90 kg, 177.21 cm and 22.21 kg/m2. Sinus bradycardia was found in a proportion of 45.8% more represented in the age group of 30 and more years (p = 0.275). First-degree atrioventricular block (AVB) was present in 19.4%. Short PR was found in 0.4% of the sample. Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVG) according to the Sokolow index was found in 70.5% (96.9% males and 3.1% females) with p Conclusion: Many electrical and echocardiographic signs of cardiac adaptation were found in our sample and must lead to a closer follow-up of these trained footballers to avoid or prevent dramatic cardiovascular events.

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