Modern sports have shown a trend of greater and greater stresses being placed on young athletes with the goal of achieving top results, which sometimes overcome the capacities of the organism’s functional reserves. On the other hand, mechanization, urbanization, and other technological advances in the modern world increase the prevalence of sedentary lifestyles. Awareness of severe deleterious effects of such a lifestyle, especially in the most developed countries, has led to efforts to increase recreational physical activity among the general population. Congenital and acquired heart and vascular diseases represent a risk factor in sports, recreation, and work-related physical activity that can lead to an increase in morbidity and mortality.
This textbook, to be published in the spring of 2018, represents a multidisciplinary approach to cardiology in sports, physical, and work-related activity, in which authors with many years of experience in professional and scientific work in the fields of kinesiology, sports cardiology, occupational medicine and dietetics, attempted to clearly and extensively cover the physiology of exercise and physical activity, as well as the pathophysiology, etiology, and diagnostics of clinical entities in sports cardiology. The book comprehensively describes the risks and benefits of exercise and physical activity in general, as well as the assessment of functional status and morphology, with the goal of establishing fitness for work and athletic activity. The specifics and importance of cardiologic examination in sports cardiology are described in detail, along with the procedures of functional diagnostics and the assessment of cardiovascular risk in athletes, which is very important for the everyday practice of all professionals working with athletes and recreational sport participants. The chapter on sports cardiology describes clinical entities from arrhythmology, heart valve diseases, and cardiomyopathy, as well as less common clinical entities found in athlete populations. The textbook delineates various aspects of recreational physical activity both in healthy participants in recreational sports and in persons with cardiovascular diseases and related risk factors. It also covers the work capacity and rehabilitation in cardiovascular patients with arrhythmias and heart failure, coronary disease, and after surgical procedures. The topics address important issues for both healthy persons and those with cardiovascular diseases – diet, sex life, driving motor vehicle capacity, physical activity at an advanced age, and resuscitation or cardiopulmonary reanimation in case of sudden cardiac death.
The textbook is intended for graduate and postgraduate students of the Faculty of Kinesiology, graduate and postgraduate students of the School of Medicine, as well as all participants in training, competition, and health care of professional and recreational athletes. The basic goals of the book are to facilitate better recognition and understanding of the specifics of the field of sports cardiology and physical and work-related activities for kinesiologists, physicians, and other sports and health care professionals. This is the first Croatian textbook of this type in the field of sports cardiology, physical and work-related activities, and cardiovascular patients, and is a welcome addition to the Croatian professional and medical literature.