Original articles  AGEING 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2004 March;44(1):92-7

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Vigorous exercise training is not associated with prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias in elderly athletes

Pigozzi F. ¹, Alabiso A. ¹, Parisi A. ¹, Di Salvo V. ¹, Di Luigi L. ¹, Iellamo F. ²

¹ University Institute of Movement Sciences of Rome, Rome, Italy 2 Department of Internal Medicine, “S. Raffaele” Cardiac Rehabilitation Center, “Tor Vergata” University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Aim. Physical activ­ity, ­when vig­or­ous, is not devoid­ed of arrhyth­mic ­risk. Since the ­risk of devel­op­ing arrhyth­mi­as ­increase as an oth­er­wise ­healthy per­son ­ages, the ques­tion aris­es as to wheth­er ­high inten­sity phys­i­cal activ­ity ­could be dan­ger­ous in the eld­er­ly per­son. The ­present ­study ­addressed the inci­dence of arrhyth­mi­as in eld­er­ly ath­letes in com­par­i­son to age-­matched con­trol sub­jects.
Methods. We stud­ied 49 ­male ath­letes ­engaged in var­i­ous ­sport dis­ci­plines, ­mean age 62.3±2.3 and 24 sed­en­tary or mod­er­ate­ly phys­i­cal­ly ­active ­healthy ­males, ­mean age 62.9±1.7 ­years (Controls). All sub­jects under­went 2-D, M-­mode and Doppler echoc­ar­di­o­graph­ic exam­ina­tion, rest­ing ECG and exer­cise ­stress ­test fol­lowed by 24-hour elec­tro­car­di­o­graph­ic mon­i­tor­ing.
Results. No path­o­log­i­cal find­ings ­were detect­ed in ­both experi­men­tal ­groups at echoc­ar­di­o­graph­ic exam­ina­tion. Exercise per­for­mance was great­er in ath­letes ­than con­trols (206.9±5.2 vs 156.3±12 ­watt, p<0.01). During exer­cise ­test, no sig­nif­i­cant ­between-­groups dif­fer­ence was detect­ed in the inci­dence of ven­tric­u­lar arrhyth­mi­as, ­that is mul­ti­ple pre­ma­ture ven­tric­u­lar con­trac­tions (­MPVC), poly­mor­pho­us pre­ma­ture ven­tric­u­lar con­trac­tions (­PPVC) and repet­i­tive pre­ma­ture ven­tric­u­lar con­trac­tions (­RPVC). No sub­ject fea­tured hor­i­zon­tal or down­slop­ing ST seg­ment depres­sion in ­both ­groups. At 24-hour elec­tro­car­di­o­graph­ic mon­i­tor­ing the inci­dence of the over­all num­ber of pre­ma­ture ven­tric­u­lar con­trac­tions was sig­nif­i­cant­ly great­er in con­trols ­than ath­letes (87.0% vs 63.3%, p<0.05), where­as no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence ­were detect­ed in the inci­dence of dis­crete ven­tric­u­lar arrhyth­mi­as ­between ath­letes (4.1% ­MPVC, 14.3% ­PPVC, 8.2% coup­lets) and con­trols (0.5% ­MPVC, 16.7% ­PPVC, 12.5% coup­lets).
Conclusion. These find­ing indi­cate ­that in eld­er­ly, oth­er­wise ­healthy, ath­letes vig­or­ous train­ing ­even to com­pe­ti­tion ­does not ­result in a great­er inci­dence of ven­tric­u­lar arrhyth­mi­as, ­although cau­tion ­should be ­made for a care­ful prep­ar­tic­i­pa­tion eval­u­a­tion.