An athlete’s heart?
I had an EKG test done at the doctor’s office during my physical. Here’s what she said.
Accompanied by the offending reading. If you look at the set of peaks on the right, see that sharp tall one? It should come down to baseline before starting up again for the lower rounder peak. Now take a look at this page that talks about early repolarization. Does it look familiar? This is what a normal ECG looks like (look at the spot marked “V6″ to compare).
As I drove back to work, my first thought was total panic, even though she said it might be nothing and I might always have had that. But she said still wanted to be certain. I kept thinking about the editor from Men’s Health who found out he had heart disease. The whole thought process changed how I felt about running and exercise and everything. If I couldn’t run because there was a problem, what would I do then? It really panicked me. I mean, what would you do to stay in shape? It was hard to imagine going for a run and not worrying about dropping dead while I ran.
I looked up “early repolarization” on the web when I got to work and found pages like this that talked about heart disease and stuff that I know nothing about. Yikes.
Then I found this. Apparently, “Athlete’s Heart” is a known condition, where people who do endurance training develop different heart muscle behavior which is visible in your ECG, and apparently, early repolarization is one of the visible signs.
When you search Google under “Athlete’s heart” you will pull up a million articles on it. Its not a bad thing, it just may make the ECG look funny. My hope is that this is what I have going on in my heart.
So in a few weeks I go for a stress test and they will check it all out to make sure its nothing bad. Sure makes for an exciting morning.
August 19th, 2006 11:35
Good lord, between Runner’s Trots and Athlete’s Heart, I may never take up running again. Hope all is well for your stress test.
August 19th, 2006 12:21
yikes! For what its worth a friend’s husband had one of these ‘it may be nothing - you might just be like that’ diagnoses and in fact, it was nothing. Getting from ‘what if’ to an answer was not fun, though. Try to stay calm. It’s probably just a manifestation of your extreme good health.
August 19th, 2006 12:31
I hope everything is alright. I went through that with a different test. The waiting was murder and I nearly strangled the doctor when she came back with the negative on the follow-up and asked _me_ why we did the test in the first place.
August 19th, 2006 17:40
I’ve heard of that before, someone in our group brought in their ECG, I didn’t understand it. But it had something to do with being an endurance athlete.
Don’t get stressed!
August 19th, 2006 20:32
Both my sons who ran had issues with college physicals because of their athlete’s hearts. Both had the wacky test results, stress tests and then the “Oh, you’re an athlete” result. There ought to be more heart doctors who run; they’d know better.
August 19th, 2006 20:36
what? that’s terrible
August 19th, 2006 21:02
i’m no cardiologist, but it looks like nothing to me. (assuming you’re not having chest pain!)
August 20th, 2006 10:04
I saw a thing about that on Oprah once. I’m sure it’s nothing, most docs don’t understand a THING about athletes!
September 9th, 2006 10:24
I have been diagnosed with this - the hard way. I fainted in my hotel room at a sales meeting and hit my head hard and gave myself a concussion. I had bad vertigo as a result so I went to the ER. The ER doc took an EKG and was very concerned that I had had a heart attack. He called in a cardiologist and he dismissed it as “Athlete’s heart”. I had a follow up visit to another cardiologist, did a cardiolite stress test, saw another cardiologist specialist and the determination was “Early Repolarization (ST elevation with normally inflected T wave). My cardiologist recommended I carry this information about my condition in my wallet because as he said “If you ever become unconscious due to a car accident or the like, you are going to want the emergency responders to know this or you might not like what they do to you” The might not like part included being shocked with the paddels or even thrombolytic therapy that they do to heart attack victims.
So beware!