26th Bethesda Conferance: Recommendations for determining eligibility for competetion in athletes with cardiovascular abnormalities

“Substantial new data over the past decade has informed a rich and comprehensive document that will change clinical practice.”

“In the past, there was no shared decision-making about sports eligibility for athletes with heart disease. These athletes were automatically prohibited from participating in sports if almost any cardiac issue was present.”

“This fits in line with a more-than-40-year continuum of providing clinical guidance to practitioners who take care of competitive athletes with underlying heart conditions. The last iteration was published in 2015, and there have been many changes over the last 10 years, and those recommendations were outdated. There has been a paradigm shift in sports cardiology, really all of medicine, with a focus on shared decision-making and incorporating the patient in the decision-making process. In the past, this process completely excluded the athlete, and the doctors were just telling the athlete what they could or could not do.”