It’s been three weeks since Buffalo Bills safety Dumar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during the nationally televised game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2.
Hamlin spent nine days at medical centers in Cincinnati and Buffalo before being discharged on January 11.
His doctors have not revealed the cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, but in the hours immediately following the incident, medical experts told ESPN and the cable news network that Hamlin had suffered a heart attack, an extremely rare phenomenon. I was confident that I was in pain.
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What is Comosio Cordis?
In a normally functioning heart, the organ pumps oxygen-rich blood throughout the body every eight tenths of a second. There is a rhythm to this process, and the heartbeat itself has an electrical cycle that keeps blood flowing at a healthy pace.
However, there is a very small window (only a few milliseconds) in this cycle during which the heart rate is susceptible to interruption (ie, fibrillation) if sufficient force is applied to the left chest wall.
Dr. Christopher Madias, director of the New England Cardiac Arrhythmia Center, said:At Tufts Medical Center, in his interview with NPR the day after the incident.. “This happens during a critical period in the cardiac cycle. The heart is vulnerable to this about 20 to 30 milliseconds into the cardiac cycle.”
To understand how small this window is: 1 millisecond is 1/1,000th.th of seconds.
In a Washington Post article, Mark Link, professor of internal medicine and director of cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, explains: be perfect. Perhaps most important is timing… [and] It must be directly above the heart and cannot be 2 cm away. ”
Additionally, Link pointed out that other factors included the shape, size, and force of the striking object.
How rare is this phenomenon?
In 2010, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article stating that between 1995 and 2010, the National Comochio Cordis Registry reported 224 cases. Even today, most experts estimate that he only has about 20-30 cases per year.
About half of the cases occur in youth sports between the ages of 10 and 18, especially in sports involving high-velocity projectiles such as baseball, lacrosse balls, and hockey pucks.
Due to the aforementioned peculiarities of the conditions necessary for cordis to occur, it is almost unheard of to occur during a football game or any other conflict between two adult athletes.
Additionally, experts believe most of these cases occur in youth sports because the skeletal system of young athletes is not fully developed. Flexible.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen under the right circumstances for professional athletes.
That happened to the NHL Hall of Famer in 1998.
St. Louis Blues star Chris Pronger, then 23, took the puck to his chest during the Stanley Cup playoffs. He fell onto the ice and was unconscious for 20-30 seconds. He was back on the ice two nights later, after it was determined that he had suffered no permanent damage.
The Importance of CPR and Automated External Defibrillators
Hamlin’s injury highlighted the vital importance of knowing how to perform CPR and having an automated external defibrillator (AED) readily available for those in cardiac arrest. It’s sex.
About 350,000 Americans go into cardiac arrest outside a medical facility each year. — And only an estimated 10% of them survive and fully recover.
But experts say those who get basic life support immediately — i.e. CPR and defibrillation — The odds have increased significantly.
Days after Hamlin collapsed, web traffic to CPR sites increased by 200%, according to the American Heart Association.
A 2018 survey by the Cleveland Clinic found that while 54% of Americans said they knew how to perform CPR, they didn’t know the correct pacing (100 to 120 times per minute) to deliver chest compressions. This is especially good news, given that only 11% ofSimilarly, a study published in the 2017 edition American Heart Association Journal Only 18% were found to have current CPR training.
Before his injury, Hamlin’s Chasing M charity started a GoFundMe account to provide toys for children in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The goal was to collect his $2,500.
A few days after his injury, the account received approximately $8.9 million in donations.
Earlier this month, Hamlin said it planned to partner with the Giving Back Fund, which helps nonprofits manage their giving, and that the funds would be used to “support young people through education and sport.” Reported to want.
Perhaps some of these resources will also help fund national CPR and AED training.
If you’re interested in getting CPR/AED training, the Red Cross offers both in-person and online classes. For more information, visit redcross.org.
This article originally appeared in the Palm Beach Post: Damar Hamlin’s Cardiac Arrest Has People Googling CPR And Asking
