Key result
Heart rate monitors show limited diagnostic utility for ventricular arrhythmias in athletes, lacking beat differentiation.
Why the study?
The prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias in athletes is not well estimated and contemporary data on their frequency in normal athlete populations are lacking.
Are heart rate monitors suitable tools for diagnosing ventricular arrhythmias in endurance athletes?
Are heart rate monitors suitable tools for diagnosing ventricular arrhythmias in endurance athletes?
The prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias in athletes is poorly defined in contemporary studies, highlighting a need to evaluate the utility of diagnostic tools like heart rate monitors.
Arrhythmias in competitive athletes are not rare. The prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias in people playing sports is not easy to estimate. First reports come from the 80s-90s of the 20th century and there are no contemporary studies concerning the frequency of ventricular arrhythmia in normal populations of athletes. The problem of ventricular arrhythmias is regarded as extremely important because they are the most frequent cause of sudden cardiac death in athletes. At the other side, ventricular arrhythmias may be a benign feature of “athlete’s heart syndrome” [1].
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Robert Gajda (2019) conducted a review in Ventricular Arrhythmias. Heart Rate Monitors was evaluated. Heart rate monitors have limited usefulness in diagnosing ventricular arrhythmias in endurance athletes because they cannot distinguish between supraventricular and ventricular beats.
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