Miroslav Slanina, Ján Kmec, Martin Studenčan
The adaptive and remodeling processes in athlete’s heart depict a physiologic response to increased exercise of the heart in all types of sports. It represents the various degree of cardiac muscle adaptive remodeling comprising some common features for all types of sport, despite the fact that there are some specific typical features for certain sports. In echocardiographic imaging it may sometimes mimic some serious cardiac diseases when it is very difficult to distinguish between them without meticulous analysis of patient’s history and in-depth knowledge of echocardiographic features of athlete’s heart. This issue is even more complicated due to the fact that we cannot exclude some pathologic processes developing on the athlete’s heart. Nevertheless, typically in athlete’s heart, there are nonlinear anatomic and electrophysiologic changes present in retained normal or supernormal myocyte function, whereas a diseased heart has various degrees of pathophysiology.