Electrocardiographic and Echocardiographic Assessment of Young Black Female Footballers: Comparison with Sedentary Female Individuals

Background: Regular, high-intensity, and prolonged physical activity causes clinical, electrical, morphological, and functional alterations in the cardiovascular system. This circulatory alterations observed in athlete heart are particularly important in black athletes as data has shown that they are more likely to experience sudden cardiac death. Comparative electrocardiographic and echocardiographic data between women who play organized football and women who are inactive are scarce particularly in African nations. Objective: To compare the cohort group’s electrocardiogram and echocardiogram to inactive women in order to determine the range of physiological adaptation in highly trained young Nigerian female football players. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study performed among 30 high-level female footballers and 30 untrained women as control group. Study participants were assessed with a health questionnaire and targeted cardiovascular examination, 12 lead ECG and two-dimensional echocardiography were done. Ethnicity was self-assigned. A 95% confidence interval was used while statistical significance was set at P