Diagnosis of Autonomic Dysfunction Syndrome in Young Atheletes

Purpose: A review of the most common and effective from the point of view of evidence-based medicine methods for diagnosing autonomic dysfunction syndrome in young athletes. Material and methods: The data of domestic and foreign literature on the diagnosis of autonomic dysfunction syndrome were analyzed. The search was carried out using electronic databases MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, eLIBRARY and Google Academy for the period from 2017 to 2022. For the search, we used keywords and their combinations: “vegetative dysfunction syndrome”, “athletes”, “diagnostics”, “functional tests”. A total of 28 sources analyzed Results: The autonomic dysfunction syndrome (ADS) is characterized by a significant polymorphism of clinical manifestations and is characterized by functional disorders of the activity of the cardiovascular, endocrine and other systems of the body. Diagnosis of this condition is associated with great difficulties associated with the nonspecificity of symptoms, their bright emotional color and the absence of morphological changes in organs. The frequent manifestation of ADS in childhood and adolescence, the proven relationship of symptoms with exercise and mental stress, determines the importance of early and effective diagnosis of this syndrome in young athletes. The key research methods for suspected autonomic dysfunction syndrome include taking anamnesis using special questionnaires and scales and conducting functional tests with registration of the parameters of the cardiovascular system (heart rate, blood pressure, HRV). The most common and informative functional tests: deep controlled breathing test, orthostatic test (active and passive), Valsalva test. Promising methods for diagnosing ADS include accelerometric tremorography and the study of baroreflex sensitivity. Also, for a deeper examination of a young athlete, it is recommended to use laboratory diagnostic methods to identify violations of the endocrine system, detect changes in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, etc. Conclusions: At the moment, further research is needed to study the autonomic dysfunction syndrome and methods for its diagnosis.