Echocardiographic and Blood Pressure Characteristics of First-Year Collegiate American-Style Football Players. uri icon

abstract

  • Echocardiographic (echo) and blood pressure (BP) reference values may help identify athletes at cardiovascular risk, yet benchmarks are inadequate for collegiate American-style football (ASF) players. Our purpose was to describe echo characteristics and BP values in collegiate ASF athletes compared with normal. First-year players (n = 80, age = 18 1 years, height = 186 7 cm, weight = 100.1 22.0 kg, body mass index = 28.7 5.0), body surface area [BSA] = 2.24 0.25; percentage fat = 16.5 9.7%) were measured for systolic and diastolic BP, and underwent echo procedures by a certified sonographer. Data analyses included simple statistics, Pearson r, frequencies in normal ranges, and t test; = 0.05. Selected echo measurements (and indexed by BSA) were: left ventricular (LV) internal diameter diastole = 5.3 0.5 cm (2.4 0.3); left atrial diameter = 3.9 0.5 cm (1.8 0.2): LV end-diastolic volume = 138 30 ml (62 11); septal wall thickness = 1.0 0.2 cm (0.5 0.1); LV posterior wall thickness = 1.0 0.1 cm (0.5 0.1), LV mass = 212 46 g (95 18); and relative wall thickness = 0.39 0.07. Correlations between BSA and echo variables were significant (r = 0.26 to 0.50). Indexing by BSA reduced percentages above reference ranges from 36% to 7%. Septal wall thickness index was significantly greater in black (0.5 0.1) than nonblack (0.4 0.1) athletes. Fifty-nine athletes were hypertensive or prehypertensive, and diastolic BP was significantly greater in black (76 10 mm Hg) compared with nonblack athletes (71 8 mm Hg). ASF athletes demonstrated LV wall thicknesses and cavity sizes consistent with sport-training hypertrophy but which were unremarkable when indexed by BSA. Ethnicity generally did not influence echo variables. No ASF players were identified with cardiac dysfunction or disease.

published proceedings

  • Am J Cardiol

altmetric score

  • 12.45

author list (cited authors)

  • Crouse, S. F., White, S., Erwin, J. P., Meade, T. H., Martin, S. E., Oliver, J. M., ... Weir, D.

citation count

  • 18

complete list of authors

  • Crouse, Stephen F||White, Stephanie||Erwin, John P||Meade, Thomas H||Martin, Steven E||Oliver, Jonathan M||Joubert, Dustin P||Lambert, Bradley S||Bramhall, Joe P||Gill, Kory||Weir, David

publication date

  • January 2016