Sport-Specific Athletic Adaptation
Prashant Rao, Connor Riegal · 2026
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Description
Rao and Riegal wrote a 2026 editorial on how professional soccer reshapes the heart, framing their commentary around the principle that form follows function. They discuss the largest echocardiographic study of adult male professional soccer players in North America. It covered 1,368 Major League Soccer players with an average age of 26 and a racially mixed roster, where ultrasound heart screening is routine.
Rao summarizes the findings: chamber dimensions, wall thickness, and heart mass often exceeded general population limits, yet true enlargement by size-indexed criteria was uncommon. No player reached the wall thickness zone that overlaps with inherited heart muscle disease. Most players showed normal geometry, right-sided enlargement was common and tracked with left-sided size, and pumping function stayed normal in nearly all. The editorial stresses that sport-specific reference values are essential so healthy athletic remodeling is not mistaken for disease, and real disease is not missed.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Prashant Rao, Connor Riegal |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 10 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |