Posted on 01/02/2024 1:30:54 PM PST by nickcarraway
— Efforts to boost survival having a moment among medical and sports societies, legislators
In January, we reported on Damar Hamlin's collapse during a televised football game. In this report, we follow up on the resulting public interest on sudden cardiac arrest that made Hamlin the most searched person of 2023.
During the final Monday Night Football game for the 2022-2023 National Football League (NFL) season, all gameplay between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals came to a halt when Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsedopens in a new tab or window after getting hit while making a seemingly routine defensive tackle.
Live television coverage continued as trainers and medical staff ran on the field and started resuscitation efforts on Hamlin, then 24 years old. He reportedly had a pulse at first when he collapsed, but lost it, prompting responders to start CPR followed by a single automated external defibrillator (AED) shock within minutes. Hamlin arrived at University of Cincinnati Medical Center within 45 minutes of his fall.
In the hospital, he went to the surgical intensive care unit and was put on mechanical ventilation and aggressive targeted temperature management. He was extubated less than a week lateropens in a new tab or window and immediately started walking and undergoing physical therapy.
By April, the Bills general manager confirmed that Hamlin was fully cleared to resume football.
After much speculation by the public, Hamlin told reporters in April that several specialists agreed on a diagnosis of commotio cordisopens in a new tab or window -- an extremely rare consequence of blunt force trauma hitting the chest during a miniscule 20-millisecond window of a regular heartbeat -- as the cause of his sudden cardiac arrest. In order to reach this diagnosisopens in a new tab or window, cardiologists would have had to exclude ischemic heart disease, dissection or spasm of the arteries, some other kind of congenital anomaly in the heart's blood vessels, and electrical problems such as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, long QT syndrome, or Brugada syndrome.
The general consensus is that the athlete survived because of quick CPR and defibrillation. Generally, one in 10 people struck by out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive before reaching hospital discharge -- though the odds of survival double or triple if CPR is performed immediately.
Hamlin made his return to the field in a preseason gameopens in a new tab or window in August. He was announced as this year's most Googled person in December.
"I do believe that public awareness of signs of cardiac arrest and immediate next steps, such as importance of bystander CPR and access to AEDs, has increased over the past year," commented Elizabeth Dineen, DO, cardiologist of Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
Before Hamlin's televised collapse, a survey showed competitive athletesopens in a new tab or window had a general limited awareness of sports-related sudden cardiac arrest and CPR. The survey included 104 collegiate athletes (37% female) at three sites. Only 50% reported knowing what sudden cardiac arrest is, and just over half had received CPR training.
This is despite sudden cardiac arrest not being a new problem in sports. Danish soccer player Christian Eriksen collapsed during a game in 2021 and was resuscitated on the field and later outfitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. In 1993, basketball player Reggie Lewis famously collapsed once during a game, later receiving conflicting diagnoses before returning to basketball and dying in a Boston Celtics practice gym.
Since Hamlin, athletes who have suffered cardiac arrests this year include college basketball player Bronny James, the Welsh soccer player Tom Lockyer, and the soccer player Raphael Dwamena from Ghana. All had reportedly received immediate medical attention after they collapsed, but the latter died.
"Overall, the high-profile sudden cardiac arrest events over the past several years have cast a spotlight on this problem. While highly impactful, sudden cardiac arrest in sport is not a new or worsening problem. In fact recent data just published out of the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] suggest that the incidence of sudden cardiac death in athletes is actually slightly lower now than in prior decades," said sports cardiologist and echocardiographer Meagan Wasfy, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"Translating the attention paid to these events into action is the best way to protect the health of all athletes and the general public," Wasfy said. "The most impactful step anyone in the public, including athletes, can take is to learn how to recognize sudden cardiac arrest and act as a bridge until medical help arrives using hands-only CPR."
Indeed, since Hamlin's recovery, there has been a slew of advocacy efforts for greater public awareness and funding for better preparation for these medical emergencies.
Hamlin has been the face of several campaigns by the American Heart Association (AHA) to raise awareness about cardiac arrest and the importance of prompt hands-free CPR. The AHA recently announced its goal to double the survival rate from sudden cardiac arrest by 2030.
The NFL Smart Heart Coalitionopens in a new tab or window was also founded in March after the Hamlin incident. The coalition had 37 partner organizationsopens in a new tab or window as recently as October, counting among them the AHA, American College of Cardiology, NCAA, and the National Basketball Association.
On the legislative side, Hamlin has also been advocating for the bipartisan Access to AEDs Actopens in a new tab or window. The bill was introduced in the Senate in late March and, if passed, would create a federal grant program for schools to purchase, maintain, and provide training for AEDs, to create athlete screening programs, and to strengthen cardiac emergency response plans.
"[An] AED won't do very well saving a life if it's run out of battery, locked in back office far from practice or competition areas, etc. It is also critical that the emergency action plan has included key stakeholders, is rehearsed frequently and updated as needed, and includes other key elements that others have previously stated," Dineen said.
"Legislative efforts on a more local/state level is where the rubber meets the road, and we have a long ways to go," she told MedPage Today in an email.
In November, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed state law S.7424/A.366Aopens in a new tab or window requiring camps and youth sports programs with five or more teams to have AED implementation plans and at least one person trained to properly use the device at camps, games and practices. She directly referenced Hamlin's cardiac arrest in her announcement of the new legislation.
Correction: The article previously misstated the odds of survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
I remember being attacked on this forum the night Hamlin was hurt for ASKING if it could have been caused by the VAX. Fun timed.
Well, we don’t know what the cause was, but his reaction was very weird.
Get a load of this...
Comeback player of the year...
For keeping his mouth shut
https://www.espn.com/nfl/player/gamelog/_/id/4036060/damar-hamlin
Check out his stats for the year.
Commotio cordis, my backside.
What???
... an extremely rare consequence of blunt force trauma hitting the chest during a miniscule 20-millisecond window of a regular heartbeat.
I would think that happens fairly regularly for an NFL safety or cornerback.
Hope the guy was unconscious at the time.
My recollection was he tweeted a friend that the doctors told him it was likely caused by being recently vaccinated but it was removed, and the story stayed it was due to the hit although the hit wasn’t that direct.
Pretty sure that didn’t happen.
A random account that is no longer active tweeted that, but it wasn’t anyone associated with Hamlin.
You probably are correct, but I do know the “hit” wasn’t at 90 degrees and I have seen a lot harder and more direct hits where nothing happened. I also know the authorities have told a number of lies.
It is his right not to answer any question about his health. HIPAA laws, you know. He probably looked like a deer in the headlights because he wasn’t prepared for the question.
And his incident had nothing to do with vaccine, didn't it?
This tendency among people who believe antivax rhetoric to automatically assume every single health crisis or death is because of vaccines is as annoying as it is wrong.
First of all, there is nothing harmful about natural immune system function when it encounters a pathogen or a piece of a pathogen (like spike mRNA). Second, some 81% of people have received at least one Covid vaccine (not to mention all of the OTHER vaccines that activate the immune system in much the same way). So you can *expect* that ~81% of people who have a serious health crisis or die have received Covid vaccine. Their vaccination status means exactly nothing when it comes to any non-Covid health condition.
When the heart stops, loss of consciousness quickly follows.
“ Their vaccination status means exactly nothing when it comes to any non-Covid health condition.”
That’s not what my cardiologist believes
This has absolutely nothing to do with HIPAA. That prevents a medical professional from telling disclosing medical information. The law does not prevent the media from asking a question, or him from answering. Absolutely nothing to with HIPAA.
Like it was the first time it ever happened.
In the NFL, all injuries/illnesses have to be reported to the league, and are made public. You could check the injury report for all 32 teams right now, and they have whether a player is out, doubtful, questionable, or likely. A team gets in trouble if they don 't report an injury. Also, there is drug testing, and the info is released.
And more detailed information is released. If a baseball player is going to have Tommy John surgery, everyone knows it. If a player is having ACL or UCL surgery, everyone knows it, and how it is progressing.
On the Monday Night Football game where Hamlin was out, there was real time news and speculation on what was happenings. I remember watching and thinking he might be dead. The announcers were updating info as it came out. So, the public knew about his condition, before he did, because he was not conscious.
I have seen surgeons give press conferences after they operate on a player. (Obviously it has been signed off.) It's reported if they have the flu or something like that. About a month ago, they even reported a QB's flu was worsened overnight.
Aaron Rodgers was asked about his vaccination, and he gave an answer that may have been technically correct, but was perceived as implying he was vaccinated. When it came out he wasn't vaccinated, he's still being criticized for it. Aaron Judge, a player on the Yankees, refused to answer whether he was vaccinated, and the media said this meant he wasn't vaccinated. (Whether he was then or not, he was later because he played in Toronto.)
So, it's pretty unbelievable that he wouldn't think he was going to be asked that, unless Michael Strahan had agreed not to ask that, but in that case, I think it would have been a huge controversy. I don't know what caused his cardiac arrest, but if you watch the clip, it's something he is deeply afraid of revealing.
I think they mentioned that that had only happened once before in the 70s. Injuries are common but what happened to Hamlin is not.
To a football player yes...rare. It happened to Chuck Hughes of the Detroit Lions in 1970... that’s the only other one I know of off hand. I saw it live on TV as it happened. He didn’t make it. Otherwise, about 350,000 Americans succumb to it every year. Very common cause of death. Take care of the old ticker!
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