[Vinniedoggy]

They are probably being overly-cautious. I've had a heart murmur for years. Some doctors can hear it, some cannot. It just depends on how closely they listen. They are extremely common and are almost always benign. They are more easily detected when you're really thin (and therefore don't have a lot of fat between your ribs and the stethescope). I really would not worry about it. If he's not having trouble being physically active, he's probably fine. If he's been doing strenuous activity for this long and not had trouble, well, if he was my son I would probably let him continue until the echo. The doctors told me too to stop physical activity until I had my echo done, but I kept on running and cycling (I was training for a marathon at the time so losing a couple of weeks of training wasn't really an option). Granted, I didn't make this decision without doing some research, but all the research I read indicated that the vast majority of murmurs are benign, so I took my chances.....and lived to tell about it :-)