Damar Hamlin, a Buffalo Bills Safety, Collapsed on the Field: What Happened to His Brain before he Could Wake?
Millions of people witnessed a wonderful life-saving act on live television when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during a game against Cincinnati on January 2.
Hamlin was listed in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
“He is beginning to awaken and it seems his neurological condition is intact, as of this morning,” said Dr. Timothy Pritts during the video conference. “This marks a really good turning point in his ongoing care.”
For the more than 350,000 Americans each year who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, the prognosis is not always an optimistic one. Most studies suggest that no more than 10% of these patients survive until hospital discharge.
As grim as that would seem, medical experts say the statistics mask much better individual outcomes for patients who receive rapid and appropriate care before they reach a hospital.
CPR, Defibrillation, and School Safety: What Do Some Bystanders Can Say about Feig’s Life?
Some bystanders are credited with helping to save Feig’s life, and he only knows the rest from them. “My heart stopped. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. He said he was having a bad reaction to the food in his mouth.
Saving someone’s life is possible with the knowledge we have right now in a world full of complicated problems. With a plan, it is easy. We often prioritize buses, fields and athletic equipment, but cardiac safety must also be at the top of the list.
More lives could be saved if people are trained inCPR and the use of an equipment called the automated external defibrilator. Keeping that training up to date is also important.
CPR is best thought of as an “effective bridge” to defibrillation, according to Weisfeldt. He says rapid defibrillation is important to survival and good brain function.
While the overall number of cardiac arrests has stayed largely consistent, there is no question that school safety efforts – and cardiac arrest survival rates – have improved over the years. In 1999 Florida became the first state to require public schools to have an automated external defibrilator, or AED, according to the American College of Cardiology. The majority of the states do not require the use of an automated External Dehydration System in schools.
In homes, the devices are rare, says Dr. Douglas Kupas, the medical director at the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.
The importance of a rapid response for AED searches: an example from a Seattle physician who works at a casino eight miles from the AED location
And even in public places, the location of an AED might not be obvious. It’s important to start compressions immediately in those cases. If another person is available, they should be the one to look for the AED, he says.
Being healthy “significantly increases” the chances of survival from an OHCA, says Dr. Stephen Anderson, an emergency medicine physician who recently retired after 35 years of practice in Seattle.
To illustrate how a rapid response can make a big difference for patients like these, Anderson points to the example of a casino that was just 8 miles from where he worked.
Reinforcement of the skill is helpful. We have to forget about the fact that if you don’t have a card that is not expired, you’re not any good at this.
He says if you took cardiopulmonary resuscitation training 20 years ago you know a lot more about doing good compressions than someone who’s never had it.
“The bottom line is push hard and push fast,” agrees Anderson, who says the recommended rhythm for chest compressions is to the beat of the 1970s Bee Gees hit “Stayin’ Alive.”
He says that they were just reading from a script and put your hand in the center of the chest between the nipple line.
What Happened to Mr. Hamlin when he was a Kid: The Impact of Cardiological Instability on Survival and Lifesaving Devices
Doctors meet in a conference room. The patient is in the unit and has already been intubated and is currently on blood pressure medication. We explain the medical realities to the family and then we talk about whether their loved ones would want CPR if their hearts stopped. Sometimes the family says no. Sometimes, even if they can resuscitate their loved ones, it won’t bring them back to an acceptable quality of life. This is what their loved ones would want, they say, perhaps imagining an outcome like Mr. Hamlin’s. They would want us to have done “everything.”
The question is if the cardiac arrest was caused by something. In a young athlete, sudden cardiac arrest is more likely because of a dangerous electrical rhythm in an otherwise healthy heart that leaves the organ unable to effectively pump blood through the body. In these cases, chest compressions will circulate blood — and bring oxygen to the brain and other vital organs — until a defibrillator is available to shock the heart back to its regular rhythm.
The rescue response was awesome to watch and reflected the remarkable resources and planning that go into every game played in the NFL. When Hamlin was in high school, I wonder what would have happened if this happened to him. What if it would’ve happened to any of my three teenage kids at their school? Would they have been saved as well?
Sudden cardiac deaths are rare in young people, but you may be surprised to know that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are about 2,000 such deaths in people under the age of 25 every year.
He points out that when he began investigating sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes in the early 2000s, survival rates hovered around 11%. A study from the past three years shows that survival rates have climbed to an average of over 70%. That’s an improvement of more than 500% in less than two decades.
Still, we can and must do better, especially at the high school level. The lifesaving device can be accessed within two to three minutes if there is increased awareness and availability.
That’s why Dr. Victoria Vetter, a cardiologist with the Cardiac Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told us that “just having an AED is not sufficient.”
The American Heart Association recommends that the device be put in a two to three minute walk. Unfortunately, even in schools that have diligently purchased devices – typically at a cost of $1,000 to $2,000 – too many of them are not readily accessible.
As part of our investigation, we defined AED access as knowing where the AEDs are in case of emergency. It is crucial to make sure they are always fully charged and that drills are run so people know how to use them.
“We have fire drills in schools generally, every month. We have active shooter drills. But we do not in most schools have sudden cardiac arrest drills,” Vetter said.
“You have to ask yourself: When those athletes get injured, who’s addressing those injuries? Who’s there to provide the emergency action plan in case something like this happens?” asked Kathy Dieringer, president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.
One of those deaths was 16-year-old Matthew Mangine Jr., a soccer player at St. Henry District High School in Erlanger, Kentucky. Matthew collapsed on a soccer field.
Matthew Mangine’s father told local news that his son wasn’t in attendance at the school that night and one of the automated external defibrilation machines didn’t show up. “That night, his initial shock came from EMS. They arrived shortly after he was down. Matthew died an hour later at the hospital.
Luann and John are both aware of that pain. They lost their 16-year-old son, Michael, on the football field when he went into cardiac arrest during a game in 2010. “There was no ambulance or AED on the field, and it took 15 minutes for the squad to arrive,” John told CNN. If the ambulance arrives 15 minutes later, he is already gone. John recalls that the doctors at the hospital worked on Michael for 45 minutes before pronouncing him dead.
This wasn’t the story for Peter Laake. In 2021, the star lacrosse player was already on the varsity team as a freshman at Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland. Peter was hit on the left side in what was apparently a normal play, but what followed wasn’t normal at all. Peter told me he blacked out and collapsed on the field.
Assisting Cardiopulmonary Exercises – Implications for the School Gyroscopes and Health Departments of Children’s Schools
All staff, athletic and educational need cardiopulmonary assist training. Availability and accessibility of AEDs with regular drills to make sure execution is flawless. An emergency action plan is posted.
You can ask all of this for yourself as a parent. I did that with the athletic department at my own children’s school after seeing what happened to Hamlin.