Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Jun 26, 2017; 9(6): 470-480
Published online Jun 26, 2017. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v9.i6.470
Cardiac damage in athlete’s heart: When the “supernormal” heart fails!
Andreina Carbone, Antonello D’Andrea, Lucia Riegler, Raffaella Scarafile, Enrica Pezzullo, Francesca Martone, Raffaella America, Biagio Liccardo, Maurizio Galderisi, Eduardo Bossone, Raffaele Calabrò
Andreina Carbone, Antonello D’Andrea, Lucia Riegler, Raffaella Scarafile, Enrica Pezzullo, Francesca Martone, Raffaella America, Biagio Liccardo, Raffaele Calabrò, Chair of Cardiology, Second University of Naples, Monaldi Hospital, AORN Ospedali dei Colli, 80131 Naples, Italy
Maurizio Galderisi, Department of Advanced Biomedical Sciences, Federico II University Hospital, 80131 Naples, Italy
Eduardo Bossone, Department of Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, University Hospital San Giovanni di Dio, 84131 Salern, Italy
Author contributions: Carbone A and D’Andrea A conceived and drafted the manuscript; Riegler L, Scarafile R, Pezzullo E, Martone F, America R and Liccardo B performed the literature review and analysis; Galderisi M, Bossone E and Calabrò R revised the final revision.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest exist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Antonello D’Andrea, MD, PhD, FESC, Chair of Cardiology, Second University of Naples, Monaldi Hospital, AORN Ospedali dei Colli, Corso Vittorio Emanuele 121A, 80131 Naples, Italy. antonellodandrea@libero.it
Telephone: +39-081-7065312 Fax: +39-081-7064234
Received: January 8, 2017
Peer-review started: January 11, 2017
First decision: February 17, 2017
Revised: March 14, 2017
Accepted: April 6, 2017
Article in press: April 10, 2017
Published online: June 26, 2017
Processing time: 169 Days and 0.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Athlete’s heart is a physiological condition that in some cases can simulate pathological disease, sometimes due to the use of doping drugs. Furthermore, exercise can induce atrial dilation and arrhythmias. Our objective is to analyze the current literature and to review the most important changes in the heart of athletes, from the different molecular pathways to the structural anomalies.