Novel echocardiographic techniques for the evaluation of athletes’ heart: a focus on speckle-tracking echocardiography

This review article analyses new data on cardiac function in athletes by novel echocardiographic techniques with a particular attention to the application of Speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) to characterise biventricular and biatrial function in athletes. STE is a relatively new, largely angle-independent, non-invasive imaging technique that allows for an objective and quantitative evaluation of global and regional myocardial function. STE has enhanced our understanding of athletes’ heart through a comprehensive characterisation of biventricular and biatrial function, providing novel insights into the investigation of physiological adaptation of the heart to exercise conditioning. These peculiarities can provide further useful data to distinguish between athletes’ heart and cardiomyopathies. Furthermore, STE represents a promising tool to address new concerns on right ventricular function and to increase understanding of the complexity of the non-systemic circulation, especially in the athletic population.