Strenuous endurance exercise and right ventricular systolic function: No evidence of long-term sequelae

Hs-cTnT levels in professional soccer players throughout a season: No evidence of sustained cardiac damage

“…Also in this line, in a previous study, we failed to find differences in both right ventricular function indicators after comparing former elite endurance athletes to age and gendermatched non-athletic controls [10].…”

Mortality in Female and Male French Olympians

“…30 There is growing evidence that the cardiovascular benefits of practicing sports at an elite level outweigh potential negative effects. 14,20,37 These elements may suggest another association between health effect and exercise load: an L-shape for the relation between risk and exercise, where there is no risk resurgence at the highest exercising levels for previously healthy subjects.…”

Editorial commentary: Relationship between strenuous exercise and cardiac “morbimortality”: Benefits outweigh the potential risks

“…However, RV dysfunction or perhaps more appropriately termed "fatigue" typically reverses within 24-48 h of recovery [20], and does not seem to stimulate pathological biological pathways [8]. In fact, no case of RV dysfunction has been reported in cohorts of middle-aged ultra-marathon runners [21] or former top athletes [22]. Except for the recent provocative work by La Gerche and Heidbuche [19]and La Gerche et al [23,24], who reported right heart dysfunction after SE, the vast majority of the echocardiographic data published in the last 4 decades show no pathological changes in LV/RV function or cardiac dimensions in top athletes [25].…”