14th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 2000

Jan. 29 - Feb. 5, 2000
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-163

QT dispersion in elite athletes with and without ventricular arrhythmias

Alessandro Biffi, Luisa Verdile, Antonio Pelliccia, Antonio Spataro, Fredrick Fernando, Giuseppe Marcello, Roberto Ciardo, Giovanni Caselli.
Sport Science Institute, Department of Medicine, CONI, Rome, Italy

Methods

The group of elite athletes without arrhythmias consisted of 50 males with a high level of achievement, randomly selected from various sports (mainly aerobic sports). The group of athletes with ventricular arrhythmias consisted of 27 males of a lower level of training, selected for the presence of a frequent and complex ventricular arrhythmias (> 3000 ventricular ectopic beats/24 h and couplets, triplets or non sustained ventricular tachycardia). All athletes were asymptomatic, except four of the arrhythmic group symptomatic for palpitations. No athlete took any medications or drugs. Athletes underwent the cardiovascular screening usually performed at our Institute including: physical examination, routine blood test, chest X-rays, resting and stress test electrocardiogram and color-Doppler echocardiogram. Athletes with ventricular arrhythmias also underwent an ECG 24h Holter monitoring (including a training session). Athletes of both groups had measurement of the QT dispersion. Measurements were obtained from a 12-lead resting electrocardiogram, recorded by a Siemens-Elema Megacart System, program version 4.0 (Solna, Sweden) at a paper speed of 50 mm/s. QT intervals were measured automatically from the beginning of the Q wave to the end of the T wave by the device computerized program. All the electrocardiograms were visually verified by the physician. The QT dispersion was calculated as the difference between the longest and the shortest QT interval. The QT dispersion was measured three consecutive times for every athlete. The mean value of the three measurements was considered for the study. Left ventricular mass was echocardiographically calculated using Devereux’s formula⁶: mass = 0.8 x [1.04 x (septal thickness + posterior wall thickness)³ – end diastolic diameter³]+0.6 g. All descriptive data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Analysis of variance was used to assess for difference between the groups. Simple linear regression analysis was used to assess correlations between variables.