17 Jan 2023 • Published on 12th January, 2023 It was a normal tackle, a normal hit, a normal moment in a big football game. Then Damar Hamlin, a Bills safety, twenty-four years old, stood up and fell backward, legs limp and feet splayed, his heart stopped. The team surrounded him as medical professionals performed CPR and used a defibrillator to get his heart beating again. Damar Hamlin had gone into a cardiac arrest and was revived on the field. He is currently hospitalized and is in stable condition.

What caused the on-field cardiac arrest?

Commotio cordis- a phenomenon in which a sudden blunt impact to the chest causes sudden death in the absence of cardiac damage. For this perfect storm to occur, the chest must be struck in a brief moment — about 20 milliseconds — while the heart is relaxing. In the last 2 or 3 decades, commotio cordis events have primarily occurred in sports, and thus, this phenomenon has become more well known to the sports communities and physicians. Commotio cordis is to be differentiated from cardiac contusion (contusio cordis), a situation in which blunt chest trauma causes structural cardiac damage, such as observed in motor vehicular accidents.

Source: The New York Times Read full story Read more on Commotio cordis