[Myocardial infarction during or after exertion related to sports. Clinical and coronary angiographic analysis of 10 cases]. / Infarctus myocardique au cours ou décours de l'effort sportif. Analysis clinique et coronarographique de 10 cas.

The purpose of this study was to analyse characteristic of myocardial infractions that occur during, or immediately after sport-related exertion in subjects who are neither athletes nor professional sportsmen and who undergo coronary angiography. Ten cases where myocardial infraction developed during (n = 3) or immediately after (n = 7) a game were studied retrospectively. All patients were men aged from 21 to 61 years (mean 48.8 years); 8 of them were smokers and 5 had hypercholesterolaemia. The sports practised were tennis (3), cycling (2), football (2), skiing (2) and weight-lifting (1). The infarction was inferior or basal in 5 cases, lateral in 1 case and anterior or anteroseptal in 4 cases. Coronary lesions involved one vessel in 6 and two vessels in 2 patients aged from 47 to 61 years. They were absent in 2 patients aged 24 and 26 respectively, with methylergonovine-induced spasm in one case. The outcome over a 2.9 years follow-up period was favorable, except for one death 6 months after the infarction (patient aged 24, normal coronary arteries, spasm). The outstanding features in this study are: (1) the occurrence of infraction during the recovery period and the noxious role played by smoking; (2) the contrast between the presence of atherosclerotic coronary lesions in middle age subjects and their absence in younger subjects (infarction due to spasm or thrombosis?), and (3) the possible usefulness of an exercise test in sport players of more than 40 years of age.