Low Yield of Genetic Testing in Athletes with T-Wave Abnormalities

Because T-wave inversions (TWIs) are common in patients with cardiomyopathies, clinicians become concerned about undetected disease when TWIs are observed in people without known cardiac disease. TWIs are more commonly observed in high-level athletes than in nonathletes, especially in athletes of African descent. To learn more about these associations, researchers enrolled 50 black and 50 white consecutive patients with severe TWI (age range, 14–35) from a pool of 2039 athletes who were referred to a U.K. specialty clinic focusing on athletes.

All athletes had echocardiograms before referral to the specialty clinic. In the clinic, they underwent exercise testing, signal-averaged and 24-hour electrocardiography, cardiac MRI, and a 311-gene pa…