European Journal of Sport Science Best Paper Award 2018 for Thijs Eijsvogels

17 April 2018

Thijs Eijsvogels received the 2018 Best Paper Award from the European Journal of Sport Science for his publication “Global and regional cardiac function in lifelong endurance athletes with and without myocardial fibrosis". This paper was part of the “CARDI-ACHE” project that Thijs performed during his Marie-Curie Fellowship at Liverpool John Moores University.

In the present study, cardiac function was compared between veteran athletes with myocardial fibrosis (i.e. cardiac scarring) versus healthy controls. For this purpose myocardial strain imaging was performed using echocardiography. We found that presence of myocardial scarring did not affect global cardiac function, although regional dysfunction was observed in co-localized scar tissue. Follow-up measurements are currently being performed to determine the long-term consequences of myocardial fibrosis on cardiac health in lifelong athletes.
 
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Thijs Eijsvogels is member of the theme Vascular damage.