Yes, absolutely. You’re running at top speed into someone else running at top speed, and you’re both likely to be big and heavy with muscle. Padding and a helmet will offer some protection but you’re not invincible. Proper technique to protect both the tackler and the one being tackled is critical.
Plus, it’s only in recent years that the NFL has gotten serious about eliminating blows to the head, both in situations where a tackler strikes an opponent in the head, as well as situations in which the tackler is leading with his head.
Even when players have been trained in proper techniques, and are aware of what the rules prohibit, there are still going to be times when an improper technique is used (either intentionally or unintentionally).
And you’re reacting in split-second time, where a player will side-step, or turn, or duck, or raise his head suddenly, and when you launched yourself for a tackle in a perfectly appropriate and safe way, you make impact in an unfortunate and potentially harmful way.
I’ve seen a lot of roughing penalties called on players and when analysts look over the play in slow motion it’s clear that there was no way to prevent the “illegal” hit. More than once I’ve heard someone say that even the world’s top athletes still have to obey the laws of physics.
Is there a reason women aren’t prone to this happening? Like anatomy? 
I’m not sure how much technique could prevent this particular occurrence. Kind of seems like a well timed elbow in the right spot would be the biggest chance of it happening, and that doesn’t happen all that often in football. I’m not even sure how it happened in this case.
Frequency of tackling involvement?
Women are far less likely to engage in full-contact sports. Pretty sure that’s the main reason for gender disparity here.
Why are people,assuming that Hamlin won’t play again? If the cardiac arrest was just a fluke and there are no actual defects with his heart, and he fully recovers, I would think he should be able to play. I hope for a Cristian Eriksen type of comeback.
But this usually doesn’t come from contact. It’s usually a blow from a projectile. Tennis, softball, volleyball maybe, there are certainly ways it could happen for a girl/woman. But all of the cases I have heard of are men. And seriously, could the breasts of women make a difference, that it couldn’t happen as easily because of them?
A softball could do it as it’s similar enough to a baseball to have the same effect. Maybe a tennis ball but a volleyball is too large and soft to deliver the sharp blow needed.
And this is where I point out the very obvious fact that even elite women athletes have less upper body strength than elite male athletes. This disparity in upper body strength continues down to the couch potato level. World-class women athletes could be strong enough, even some upper level amateurs, but then you get to the fact that most of the at-risk activities are very heavily male-dominated.
Is it possible that a woman-thrown projectile hitting the correct spot at the right milisecond could induce commotio cordis? Yeah. But women still tend to engage in less throwing of objects (as well as fewer contact sports) and are in general less powerful when throwing so it makes it less likely to occur.
No.
The “target area” is largely over the upper sternum (slightly offset towards the left) between the 2nd and 4th ribs which the breast tissue doesn’t cover. Human breasts (at least the non-surgically modified ones) start around the 3rd rib at the highest point but it’s a very thin amount of tissue there. The pectoral muscles on a male human like Damar Hamlin are actually substantially thicker and make a better padding than what sort of breast tissue anyone would have at that point. You don’t get substantial breast thickness until further down, lower than the 4th rib, and the older the women the lower they hang. Female breasts are not why this seldom happens to girls or women.
The wikipedia link states that 96% of victims of this are/were male, which implies 4% are not, so presumably it does occur in girls/women from time to time.
The sports listed with risks of this are:
baseball, American football, association football (soccer), ice hockey, polo, rugby football, cricket, softball, pelota, lacrosse, boxing, professional wrestling, hurling and martial arts
I will note that of those sports only soccer, softball, lacrosse, and martial arts see significant numbers of women. I recall from my soccer days that women are less inclined to use their chests as part of the game than men, and during penalty kicks instead of putting our hands in front of our crotches as the boys did we put them across our chests which would definitely decrease the chances of a ball causing this problem in us.
This happens more often to boys and men because they are much more likely to engage in higher risk sports and they are more likely to exert the required force (a minimum of 50 joules or 37 foot-pounds according to wikipedia). It’s really not any more complicated than that.
Add in some of the other ways this can happen (like a car accident) and that accounts for the distribution of victims by gender - almost but not quite entirely men.
Yes - but it’s not just any projectile. Not a tennis ball, not a volleyball. It’s not common in softball *, although the most common youth sport for incidents is baseball. What percentage of baseball players are female? One or two percent maybe. Same for some of the other sports listed, like rugby and ice hockey. There really doesn’t have to be any anatomical difference to account for the fact that 96% of 10-20 incidents per year happen to males if 98% of the people playing the sport with the most incidents are male.
* My guess is that the size of the ball is not what matters - it’s overhand vs underhand pitching and most recreational softball ( and therefore most players ) is slow-pitch which is maybe 30 mph. A 12 year old baseball pitcher will get to 50 mph + and a 14 year old will be around 70 +.
A recently published case report of commotio cordis occurring in a young woman playing college softball, caused by a hard tag on the bases, not a thrown pitch:
Note that she apparently was cleared to play again following treatment (there was a background of cardiac abnormality and she received an implanted device).
Which is contact, eh?
That extra rib that women have protects them from this kind of problem.
(That was a joke, I know the extra rib is not a real thing.)
Female fast-pitch pitchers, at the collegiate level, are pitching (underhanded) at 60-70mph; teenaged girls pitch at around 50mph.
In most cases, if a ball is headed one’s way, one can see it and move away, or block it.
If women regularly engaged in full-contact sports, I would imagine that things like this could happen to them too, and that includes blows from the back.
There is still a lot cardiologists don’t understand about heart contusions, commotio cordis and sudden dysrhythmias. If you are hit by a projectile, these can still be very fast and the force is distributed over a small area, resulting in significant pressure (pressure= force/area) and energy (multiplying: 0.5 mass velocity velocity). Cases are too rare to study easily, and the findings don’t really match expectations or the clinical experience.
R on T phenomenon usually refers to defibrillating at the wrong point of the cycle, triggering ventricular tachycardia (VT). Commotio also triggers VT but is often refractory to defibrillation and can occur with what is described “low impact trauma”. Though this is often due to projectiles, these need not be that low an impact. Cases are rare but there are often no signs of structural heart problems seen in autopsy. No one knows why it happens or why defibrillation does not work as well as it should. VT often changes to the more dangerous ventricular fibrillation.
I always thought the high impact must induce some sort of “bruising” on the heart (cardiac contusion). The ribs protect against this, and breast tissue partly does. But ribs and breast won’t protect well against a well localized very fast or high pressure blow. From my experience, broken ribs due to CPR are not that common and are largely in older patients. Though somewhat painful for six weeks, they are rarely very concerning because three layers of muscle hold the ribs in place like a natural splint. They can be very concerning when associated with flail chest, an isolated area of broken ribs moving independently from the rest of the chest wall. This is also rare and generally seen after high speed motor vehicle collisions.
It’s not so much how fast the pitches are thrown, it’s how fast they are hit back. Most cases I’ve heard were from line drives hit back at the pitcher. A softball pitcher is very close to the batter and the ball is coming back very fast. The pitching form is much different so it may be softball pitchers may be in a better position to protect themselves.
Hamlin’s recovery has really inspired the bills. Quite the game.
I wonder what hamlin’s monitors are showing as he is watching this game.
Almost everyone was rooting for the Bills.