Do competitive athletes and highly active people with cardiovascular diseases require a dedicated sports cardiac rehabilitation clinical pathway?
This viewpoint proposes a dedicated sports cardiac rehabilitation clinical pathway tailored to the specific physiologic capacity and performance demands of competitive athletes with cardiovascular disease.
Sports cardiology is a subspeciality of cardiology that diagnoses and manages cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in competitive athletes and highly active people (CAHAP) and guides return to play (RTP) decision-making.1,2 Despite advances in this field, a gap persists between initial clinical management and safe return to systematic and intense exercise training and competition. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) defines how prescribed and monitored exercise can be delivered safely and effectively to general CVD populations. However, a systematic CR pathway tailored to CAHAP remains underdeveloped. Given the fundamental differences in physiologic capacity and performance demands between CAHAP with established CVD and general CVD populations, we raise a timely question: do CAHAP with CVD require a dedicated sports CR clinical pathway? In this viewpoint, we proposed a structured ‘sports CR clinical pathway’, integrating sports and preventive cardiology with established CR principles and examining its safety and cost-effectiveness within a multidisciplinary model of care. In this viewpoint, we referred to CAHAP, consistent with prior scientific statements.1,3 Competitive athletes are defined as individuals engaged in organized sports requiring regular competition and systematic, intensive training.1,3
Ghram et al. (Wed,) studied this question.