2 min read • January 04, 2023
Posted in
The recent scary incident with Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin taught a valuable lesson about the importance of a prepared medical staff at live sporting events.
As Dr. David Chao detailed Monday night, Hamlin is alive because of the quick use of CPR and an AED after he went into cardiac arrest. He was revived on the field and transported to the hospital in critical, but stable condition. He remains on life support, but his breathing function is reportedly improving by the day.
If trained medical staff and an AED device were not present, the result likely would have been more dire. CPR and an AED are considered early forms of life support.
Other than a hospital, a professional sporting event is the second best place for an athlete to have a cardiac episode. All the tools are present and medical personnel are trained to spring into action at the first sign of distress.
The next step for the sports world is to ensure those tools are available at all levels of sporting events. Ensuring that an AED and a CPR-trained professional are present gives the best chance to avoid catastrophe if a cardiac episode occurs.
AED stands for automatic external defibrillators, which are routinely on both NFL sidelines and even brought on the plane and bus with the traveling team. They are used for defibrillation, or shocking a heart back into rhythm, during a cardiac episode.
The use of an AED along with CPR significantly improves a person’s chance of surviving a cardiac episode or heart attack. For every minute defibrillation is delayed, the odds of survival decrease by 10%.
The Red Cross provides a step-by-step explanation of how to use an AED device. Classes are also available through their website and are obligatory for athletic trainers at any level.
Based on video of the play that led to Hamlin’s scary incident, it’s likely he suffered cardiac arrest as a result of commotio cordis.
Our team of doctors put together a detailed explanation of commotio cordis and its history in sports. You can read that here.
In short, commotio cordis occurs when a direct blow to the chest happens at the exact wrong time in a heart’s cycle. The blow causes the heart’s electrical signal to go haywire and the only way to restore it is through the use of CPR and an AED.
Commotio cordis is a rare phenomenon. When it does occur, it happens 95% of the time in males and 91% of the time prior to the age of 25, with 15 years old being the average.
It is more common to see in sports with hard projectiles, such as baseball or hockey. There is currently no known specific force threshold that causes commotio cordis, but higher forces seem to make it more likely.
Since 2006, 58% of cases have survived, with the biggest factor in survival being how long the patient goes until receiving CPR. An AED and CPR are early forms of life support before a patient can be transported to a hospital.
Once again, the presence of a CPR-trained professional and an AED can drastically improve the chances of survival on the off-chance commotio cordis occurs in an athlete.
Written by
