Posted on 01/29/2023 3:42:04 PM PST by nickcarraway
Each replay and image from Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium, beginning with the tackle that caused Bills safety Damar Hamlin to suffer a cardiac arrest on the field Monday night, sent Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger back to May 10, 1998.
Pronger was 23 years old and competing with the St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference semifinals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when he was struck on the left side of his chest by a slap shot from Detroit Red Wings defenseman Dmitri Mironov.
Like Hamlin before his collapse on the field, Pronger managed to stand up following the impact and took two strides before falling to the ice. Teammates huddled around Pronger. Both athletic training staffs rushed to his side.
Neither Blues trainer Ray Barile nor team physician Dr. Aaron Birenbaum could find a pulse on Pronger's neck or wrist. Pronger’s lips were blue, and becoming bluer by the second, while his eyes were rolled back into his head. Barile cut Pronger’s jersey and shoulder pads to prepare to perform CPR when, suddenly, he awoke.
“The lights go dark and, all of a sudden, you wake up and I was staring up at the rafters at Joe Louis Arena, looking at retired numbers and banners and what not,” Pronger recalled in a phone interview Tuesday with The Buffalo News. “Kind of turned and glanced over and we had guys crying on the bench, not really knowing what was going on. My equipment was cut open, everything was sliced open with scissors.”
Pronger was rushed to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and diagnosed with commotio cordis, which is a disruption of rhythm that occurs as a result of a blow to the area directly over the heart at a critical time during the cycle of a heartbeat.
Each test that followed indicated there was no risk in Pronger resuming his career. He played two nights later and helped the Blues advance to Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinal series, which they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Red Wings. Pronger appeared in 949 more games, regular season and playoffs, over the 13 years that followed.
Pronger, now 46, isn’t sure of the medical explanation behind the terrifying incident following a routine tackle that, as of Tuesday afternoon, has Hamlin in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Doctors across the country have suggested that signs point to commotio cordis, and the video of Pronger’s blocked shot quickly circulated on social media as people across the world awaited word on Hamlin’s status.
“I got hit with the puck, my heart skipped a beat and that's how much oxygen is traveling through your body with that one heartbeat,” Pronger added. “So, down I went. It was a scary, scary situation. I think, you know, when you see a football player in that situation with what had transpired, it didn't look like some of the bigger hits that we've seen this year and in years past.
“But certainly, the way Damar went down, you could tell he was in duress and with how quickly the medical staff got out to attend to him and the players. Understanding the magnitude of what was going on, it hits home, certainly.”
All these years later, Pronger admits he didn’t quite understand the seriousness of the blocked shot. He only cared about his availability for the Blues, who were trying to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. It wasn’t until he was seen by cardiologists, including Dr. Barry Maron, a preeminent expert in commotio cordis, that Pronger understood the gravity of the situation.
In hindsight, Pronger is thankful he wasn’t married and didn’t have children yet. Like many athletes, he thought he was “invincible.” He didn’t understand how lucky he was to regain consciousness so quickly or how unlucky he was for the incident to occur at all.
Maron, now a professor of medicine at Leahy Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., didn’t immediately recall Pronger’s blocked shot when reached by phone Tuesday. These incidents of commotio cordis are so rare in professional sports that the memory was lost to time. But the way Hamlin tackled Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, then stood up before collapsing to the field, led Maron to one conclusion.
“Most likely, this is commotio cordis,” Maron said. “Could be other things, but I think the overwhelming impression is that, and that's defined as a blow to the chest that elicits an arrhythmia that can be lethal. And I think that's what happened here just by the circumstances on the clinical profile. It's unusual because of the pattern that's there, and it requires an exquisite timing of the blow, which explains why a pretty average tackle or blow here, repeated hundreds and thousands of times, did not have the same result.
“The blow has to be timed to a particular window of 30 milliseconds in the upstroke of the T wave on the electrocardiogram. This has all been worked out in experimental models. So, you have to be unlucky in terms of the timing because there was nothing really unusual about the blow in terms of football.”
Pronger didn’t collapse immediately after blocking the shot because it can take a few moments for ventricular fibrillation, an irregular rhythm, to begin, Maron said. Defibrillation can and, in many cases, has reversed the commotio cordis and led to a full recovery, he added.
While appearing on a podcast with retired professional goalie Mike McKenna in July 2019, Barile, the Blues' trainer, recalled how Pronger’s reaction to the incoming shot caused his shoulder pads to expose his chest wall.
Pronger was unresponsive after collapsing. This was before automatic external defibrillators were mandatory in public spaces such as sporting venues, so Barile was preparing to perform CPR. In 1997, Florida became the first state to enact a broad public access law to mandate AEDs. Pronger awoke before one was needed, though.
“Chris, from my understanding, is one of the few individuals to be hit in the chest wall, suffer commotio cordis, converted and lived,” Barile said on the podcast. “So, we were extremely fortunate.”
Pronger knew within moments of turning on the "Monday Night Football" broadcast that the hit involving Hamlin was different than any other seen in recent years. At home in St. Louis, Pronger saw players on the Bills and Bengals sobbing. Many were unable to watch as trainers performed CPR on Hamlin. Broadcasters were speaking in hushed tones.
Sixty-five minutes after Hamlin fell to the field, the game was officially postponed by the NFL. Athletes from across the globe went to social media to express their support for the second-year defensive back. The Sabres canceled their media availability Tuesday morning following their skate in Capital One Arena as players and coaches processed and hoped for good news.
“In situations like this, the human perspective takes over and humanity in itself really takes over and you have to really kind of peel the onion layer back a little bit and take a look inside as to what actually is transpiring and what's going on,” said Pronger. “And really make note and take light of how huge this is for professional sports that this potentially could happen.”
There. Now the lamestream media has "proven" that this really happens and had nothing to do with covid.
So stop asking questions about the vaxx status of athletes and anyone under 50 who "died suddenly" in the last two years.
So they’re digging back to 1998 to find an athlete cardiac event they can counter the flood of current “sudden deaths”...?
I’ll never forget Clint Malarchuk
Gruesome video, hate to even think about it.
We Found One!!!!!
Find this guy and Write it up!!!!
The narrative is saved.
I recall a fighter from the fake old days of Bruno Sammartino, Gorilla Monsoon, and the Grand Wizard. He was named “Stan the Man Stasiak”. His specialty was the “heart punch”.
Commentators would sound like they were freaking out, saying the hapless random dude getting heart-punched was in mortal danger and the punch should be banned.
In summary, yes, I know there is some definite risk of cardiac arrest from blows to the heart. But statistically, it’s probably minuscule these days in comparison with “unexplained”.
Bob Johnson related giving a boxer such a punch in “Thunderbolt”. Similar result, except that his opponent was permanently disabled (from boxing). I guess I read that ~52 years ago...
Oh, they found a straw to grasp? 🙄
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