Rapid on-site emergency treatment by well-trained medical personnel is widely credited with saving Damar Hamlin’s life. But whether his cardiac arrest could have been prevented is less certain.
Doctors say they are still evaluating what caused Hamlin’s heart to stop following a tackle during Monday night’s game in Cincinnati. — impossible to predict or prevent.
Pre-existing heart disease is the most common cause of sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes. Some of them can be detected by tests such as the electrocardiogram, which measures the heart’s electrical activity, and echocardiogram, an ultrasound imaging test that shows how the heart’s muscles and valves are working.
These tests cannot detect all heart conditions and may miss potentially fatal ones. Dr. Andrew Peterson, team physician at the University of Iowa, says it’s routinely used in professional sports and is used in about half of the NCAA programs.
The American Heart Association and American Academy of Pediatrics do not recommend routine use in high school or youth sports because false-positive results rule out too many athletes, Peterson said.
Marielle Jessup, Ph.D., chief medical officer of the Heart Association, says regular physical exams include questions about family history of heart disease and worrisome symptoms such as fainting episodes, increased heart rate, and chest pain during activity. A heart test would be warranted to investigate these symptoms, she said.
“Once someone becomes an adult, a diagnosis may not be made,” she noted. happen.”
Hamlin’s medical history has not been made public. 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety still in hospital but doctors say he’s making remarkable progressspeak and breathe by themselves.
Jessup said Hamlin was “very lucky to have someone around who knew CPR” and started right away.
He also benefited from the NFL’s regular medical emergencies. Drill Held at the stadium before each match.
According to NFL Player Health and Safety Information Online, “The meeting will ensure that officials, team medical staff, and game day medical personnel are made aware of health and safety procedures and resources for all players in the game. This is an important checkpoint to make sure that
Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the things they try to prepare for. Although rare, it is the leading medical cause of death in young athletes, with an estimated 1 in 50,000-80,000 young athletes suffering from sudden cardiac death each year.
A rare cause of these deaths is a heart attack, which occurs when someone receives a sharp blow to a specific location in the chest at a specific time in the heart’s rhythm cycle. You will not be able to send to Previously, it was almost always fatal, but recognition has improved survival to about 60%, says Dr. Mark Link of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Texas.
One of the most common heart conditions involved in cardiac arrest in athletes is often detected on an echocardiogram. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic disorder in which part of the heart muscle thickens, making it difficult for the heart to pump blood. Affected people do not always have symptoms and often go undiagnosed.
Former Baylor basketball player King McClure didn’t know he was affected until he had an EKG and echocardiogram early in his freshman year in 2015.
The diagnosis was devastating. Doctors said he could die if he continued to play. One doctor suggested the option of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which shocks the heart to restore a normal heartbeat.
The implanted device “has never worked, by the grace of God,” said McClure, now 26 and an ESPN analyst.
Seeing Hamlin fall, McClure said, “That could have been me. It’s kind of scary when you see things like that happening so close to home,” he said. rice field. “I’m just grateful that Hamlin is fine and still here.”
After her 17-year-old son, Jake, died of sudden cardiac arrest during a football practice, Julie West of LaPorte, Indiana, said her school had more extensive support for routine heart checks, automated external defibrillators, and more. Use, became an advocate for regular cardiac emergency training. in 2013.
“For Jake, no one really knew what to do right away,” she said. “The AED was in the coach’s office. The coach intervened and he gave CPR,” but it was too late.
Since then, awareness of AEDs has grown and AED procedures are emphasized at nearly every level of sport and even high school.
“This is part of our CPR refresher course,” said Eric McAuliffe, women’s varsity basketball coach for Indian Lakes-Long Lakes in upstate New York. “We will absolutely do it and also quiz the coach on where to find her AED at each school.”
An autopsy revealed that Jake had a rare hereditary heart condition that caused no symptoms and was not discovered during routine physical examinations. is in the same condition, and is currently wearing an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.
West was a teacher when Jake died, and she had been trained in aggressive shooters and firefighters, but not in cardiac arrest.
“If they don’t have a heart response plan, they’re not ready,” she said.
She founded a foundation that organizes ECG and echocardiogram screenings in Indiana schools.
West knows the tests aren’t perfect, but for her, saving one life is worth it.
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Contributed by AP Sports writers Tim Reynolds, Ron Bloom and Ralph Russo.
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Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at @LindseyTanner.
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The Associated Press’ Health Sciences Division is supported by the Scientific and Educational Media Group at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. AP is solely responsible for all content.
