2020 ESC Guidelines on Sports Cardiology and Exercise in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease

ADVISING individuals with diseases of the heart on what types and intensities of sport to participate in is not a practice cardiologists typically have official guidelines on. A taskforce from ESC has now come together and created guidelines, the first of their kind, on exercise and sports participation in patients with cardiovascular disease. The guidelines were presented at the ESC Congress 2020 in a session chaired by Prof Antonio Pelliccia, Scientific Director of the Institute of Sports Medicine & Science from Rome, Italy. Pelliccia was joined by Prof Martin Halle, President of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC), Munich, Germany, and Prof Matthias Wilhem, Head of the Centre for Preventive Cardiology, Sports Medicine, Department of Cardiology at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern, Switzerland. The guidelines derived from the need to assist patients who had experienced cardiovascular events and were questioning their limits of sports participation. Prof Halle commented on his experience in the taskforce: “The level of evidence is rather low, so it is very much the personal perspective and the experience of the experts which made us come to that one conclusion in the guidelines. It is something that should be developed in years to come.” A series of videos were shown, presented by specialists who were invited to discuss some of the most relevant topics of the guidelines.