Does the presence of prolonged ventricular pauses increase the risk of near syncope, syncope, or death in highly-trained athletes?
Prolonged ventricular pauses, even those lasting 3 seconds or more, are benign in highly-trained athletes and are not associated with an increased risk of syncope or death.
The long-term prognosis of athletes with long ventricular pauses has been unknown. In this study, thirty highly-trained cross-country skiers and 24 age-matched controls underwent 24 h Holter monitoring to detect the duration of the longest ventricular pause (LVP), and we followed the athletes for more than 3 years to evaluate prognostic significance of prolonged LVP. The LVPs of the athletes averaged 2.2 +/- 0.6 sec (range 1.3-3.4), which were significantly longer than those, 1.6 +/- 0.3 sec, of the controls. In the athletes, 20 cases (66.7%) had LVPs more than 2 sec, and 5 (16.7%) showed LVPs longer than 3 sec. During 3 years follow-up, no athletes had symptoms of near syncope, syncope or death under continued heavy training. Our study suggested that athlete with prolonged ventricular pause, even of 3 sec or more, did not have a different clinical risk than those without long pauses.
OGAWA et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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