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Originally Posted by MikeWaters
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This is sort of a strange article. HCM is nothing new--any time you hear about an athlete dying during a game or intense practice, it's almost always HCM (Reggie Lewis, Hank Gathers come to mind...). I had a friend die two years ago while cycling. He was the type who pushed himself really hard a lot and as I soon as I heard the news, my first thought was HCM, which the autopsy confirmed several days later. What we think happens is that the heart goes into a deadly arrhythmia, one that could be reversed if medical personnel were on hand with a defibrillator, but that's obviously pretty rare.
The article is treating this like we had no idea that athlete's hearts are large. Not true. Or that HCM merely means a large heart. Also not true--what characterizes HCM is the hypertrophy of a particular portion of the heart . Or that they're concerned that athletes can develop HCM through training. Again, not true--it's typically a heritable trait. So I'm not exactly sure what they're researching, other than perhaps merely documenting just how large an athlete's heart can get. I'd be curious to hear CardiacCoug's input on this.