In January, we reported on Damar Hamlin’s collapse during a televised football game. In this report, we track the resulting public interest in the sudden cardiac arrest that made Hamlin the most wanted person of 2023.
During the final Monday Night Football game of the 2022-2023 National Football League (NFL) season, all play between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals stopped when Damar Hamlin Security Bills Collapsed after being hit while making a seemingly routine defensive tackle.
Live television coverage continued as trainers and medical staff ran onto the field and began resuscitation efforts on Hamlin, then 24 years old. He reportedly had a pulse initially when he collapsed, but lost it, prompting responders to begin CPR, followed by a single automated external defibrillator (AED) shock within minutes. Hamlin arrived at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center within 45 minutes of his fall.
At the hospital, he went to the surgical intensive care unit and was placed on mechanical ventilation and aggressive, targeted temperature management. It was extubated less than a week later and immediately began walking and undergoing physical therapy.
In April, the Bills general manager confirmed that Hamlin was fully cleared to return to football.
After much public speculation, Hamlin told reporters in April that several specialists agreed upon a diagnosis of commotio cordis — an extremely rare consequence of blunt trauma hitting the chest during a tiny 20-millisecond window of a regular heartbeat — as the cause of his sudden cardiac arrest. For arrive at this diagnosiscardiologists should have ruled out ischemic heart disease, artery dissections or spasms, any other type of congenital abnormality of 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 with rapid CPR and defibrillation. Typically, one in ten people who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive before reaching discharge – although the chances of survival double or triple if CPR is performed immediately.
Hamlin returned to the field in a pre-season match in August. He was announced as the most searched person on Google in December.
“I believe public awareness of the signs of cardiac arrest and immediate next steps, such as the importance of CPR and access to AEDs, has increased over the past year,” commented Elizabeth Dineen, DO, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. .
Before Hamlin’s televised collapse, survey showed competitive athletes had generally limited knowledge of sports-related sudden cardiac arrest and CPR. The survey included 104 collegiate athletes (37% women) spread across three sites. Only 50% said they knew what sudden cardiac arrest was, and just over half had received CPR training.
And this, even if sudden cardiac arrest is not a new problem in sport. Danish footballer Christian Eriksen collapsed during a match in 2021 and was resuscitated on the field and then fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. In 1993, basketball player Reggie Lewis collapsed once during a game, then received conflicting diagnoses before returning to basketball and dying in a Boston Celtics practice gym.
Since Hamlin, athletes who have suffered cardiac arrest this year include college basketball player Bronny James, Welsh soccer player Tom Lockyer and soccer player Raphael Dwamena of Ghana. All reportedly received immediate medical attention after collapsing, but died.
“Overall, the high-profile sudden cardiac arrest events over the past few years have brought this issue to light. Although highly impactful, sudden cardiac arrest in sport is not a new or emerging problem. In fact, recent data just released by the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) suggests that the incidence of sudden cardiac death in athletes is actually slightly lower today than that of previous decades,” said sports cardiologist and echocardiographer Meagan Wasfy, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“Translating attention to these events into action is the best way to protect the health of all athletes and the general public,” Wasfy said. “The most effective action the public, including athletes, can take is to learn to recognize sudden cardiac arrest and act as a bridge until medical help arrives by using hands-only CPR .”
Indeed, since Hamlin’s recovery, there have been numerous advocacy efforts for greater public awareness and funding for better preparedness for these medical emergencies.
Hamlin has been the face of several American Heart Association (AHA) campaigns to raise awareness of cardiac arrest and the importance of rapid hands-free CPR. The AHA recently announced its goal of doubling the survival rate after sudden cardiac arrest by 2030.
THE NFL Smart Hearts Coalition was also founded in March after the Hamlin incident. The coalition had 37 partner organizations as recently as October, including the AHA, the American College of Cardiology, the NCAA and the National Basketball Association.
On the legislative side, Hamlin has also advocated for bipartisanship. AED Access Act. 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, create screening programs athletes and strengthen response plans in the event of a cardiac emergency.
“(An) AED will not save a life very well if it is out of battery, locked in the back office away from training or competition areas, etc. It is also essential that the action plan d “Emergency involves key stakeholders and is repeated frequently and updated as needed, and includes other key elements that others have already stated,” Dineen said.
“Legislative efforts at the local/state level are where the rubber meets the road, and we have a long way to go,” she said. Page Med today in an email.
In November, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed state law S.7424/A.366A Require that camps and youth sports programs with five or more teams have AED implementation plans and that at least one person be trained to properly use the device during camps, games and practices. She directly referenced Hamlin’s cardiac arrest in her announcement of the new legislation.
Correction: The article previously incorrectly stated the chances of survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
