Purposes: Analyzing at which age exercise training induces characteristic modifications of heart and which of the characteristics of the athlete’s heart develop in the different ages?
Methods: A systematic literature review including 188 publications.
Results: In children age (55 years) physically active subjects also displayed significantly higher E/A quotients (1.104 ± 0.093) than passive persons (0.917 ± 0.104), p = 0.004. According to the Tissue Doppler Imagining (TDI) the mitral lateral annulus seems to be the most sensitive region to detect difference in the E’/A’ quotient. At the competitive age difference between athletes and non-athletes was significant (3.21 ± 0.64 vs. 2.32 ± 0.55, p = 0.0265) similarly to the transmitral E/A (1.97 ± 0.37 vs. 1.73 ± 0.31, p = 0.0228, < 0.05).
Conclusion: Different characteristics of the athlete’s heart are manifested unequally during the lifetime: LV hypertrophy develops at the young age; differences reach the maximum in young adults (36-55 years) and are less marked in older subjects. Coronary capillary network seems to develop mostly in younger athletes, while a difference in diastolic function seems to be more manifest in the competitive age but also appear in older subjects
