What is the prevalence of hinge point late gadolinium enhancement in young elite athletes?
Hinge point late gadolinium enhancement on CMR is common in young elite athletes, is associated with sex and lower LVEF, and should be considered a normal feature of the athlete's heart.
BACKGROUND: Myocardial late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging has been described in older endurance athletes, particularly at the ventricular hinge point. However, data on young, elite athletes are lacking. We therefore quantified the prevalence of hinge point LGE (HP-LGE) in young elite-level athletes. METHODS: We investigated 309 (40% women; median age 25.1 21.9-29.5 years) asymptomatic athletes included in the ELITE prospective cohort (Evaluation of Lifetime Participation in Intensive Top-level Sports and Exercise cohort), investigating cardiovascular screenings of elite (national-, international-, Olympic-, or Paralympic-) level athletes, including cardiac magnetic resonance imaging with short-axis cine imaging, LGE, and T1-mapping. RESULTS: =0.010). CONCLUSIONS: HP-LGE is a common finding in asymptomatic, elite athletes and is strongly associated with sex. Lower left ventricle ejection fraction is moderately associated with HP-LGE. Our study's HP-LGE prevalence indicates that HP-LGE should be interpreted as a feature of the athlete's heart.
Verwijs et al. (Wed,) studied this question.