Echocardiographic study of cardiac structure among open and closed skill athletes

The present study was conducted to examine the echocardiographic parameters between open and closed skill athletes. To obtain data for this study, the investigator had selected seventy two (N=72) male university level athletes of 19 to 25 years of age group to act as subjects. They were further divided into two groups which includes thirty six (n= 36) open skill athletes and thirty six (n=36) closed skill athletes of various games. The purposive sampling technique was used to obtain the required data. To measure the cardiac morphology the echocardiography was administered. One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to find out the intra-group differences. To test the hypothesis, the level of significance was set at 0.05.The results revealed significant differences between open and closed skill athletes on the left ventricular internal dimensions and thickness. The study concludes that cardiac morphology is affected by the type of sport and training undertaken by the athletes.