Relationships between biventricular myocardial function and oxygen uptake during exercise in healthy adolescent male athletes

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Programme Grant Work supported as part of a research partnership between the University of Bristol and Canon Medical Systems UK that determines the independence of the research from either parties. Background Biventricular cardiac function improves with increasing work-rate during exercise in healthy elite athletes, but how it relates to concomitantly measured oxygen uptake (VO2) is not well known. Assessing cardiac determinants of cardiorespiratory fitness through multimodal evaluations may lead to improvements in clinical stress testing protocols and better understanding of exercise physiology. Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate whether left and right ventricular (LV and RV) systolic function measured by speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) at submaximal exercise (moderate and high intensity domains) is associated with concomitantly measured VO2 in healthy adolescent male athletes. Methods Elite male football players