Valves rupture and muscles seize. Here’s a link to a Myocardial rupture.
If you want to argue semantics about a heart muscle tearing itself apart that’s not in the spirit of the discussion. People routinely die from stress related heart failure.
There seems to me a difference between:
“In layman’s terms, the heart explodes”
and
“In layman’s terms, the heart literally explodes.”
So you’re saying that all of the people who have died in police custody have been overdosing on drugs?
I’ve dealt with people that were high on drugs, running around naked, and screaming. Literally.
And I’ve managed to handle the situations without anyone ending up dead.
When did I say that?
And not everyone who is messed up on drugs is having excited delirium. It is a specific physiological episode. And not everyone who has ED dies in police custody. The 2 I dealt with didn’t.
“In layman’s terms the heart literally explodes” is you telling us that the heart literally explodes, and that you are putting it that way just to make it clear - e.g. to laymen - as opposed to using a medical term. “Literally explodes” means literally explodes.
Hearts don’t do that. Not unless a person gets hit with a cannon shell, and sure as hell not during a case of death by cop - er, I mean, excited delirium.
I apologize if I misunderstood you but that seems to be what you said.
You seem to be saying that the reason people die of EXD during the stress of police custody but don’t die of EXD during other stressful situations is because the people in police custody are overdosing on drugs.
If that wasn’t the point you were making, could you please clear it up and tell us what you meant?
People in accidents and natural disasters typically don’t get excited delirium at all.Every case I have heard of the subject had some kind of substance in them. That is the common denominator…
I have been to horrible, horrible car crashes and house fires where people were very upset. They were yelling and screaming. But they weren’t smashing everything in sight, tearing off their clothing, sweating profusely, eating grass, or babbling incoherently. ED has a specific set of behaviors that sets it apart from how people in other stressful situations act. The trigger is almost always some form of substance, not an outside stimulus.
So what you’re saying, pkbites, is that excited delerium does not in fact exist, and it’s a misdiagnosis for what should be diagnosed as drug overdose.
And yet the medical review article that I quoted above makes clear that physical restraint or force of some kind is at least as common a factor in ExDS cases as drugs.
Yes, a majority of these people might have ingested some form of intoxicant, but if its the physical restraint that leads to the physical collapse and death, isn’t that at least as much of a “trigger” as the drugs?
Just listening to your description, you would never even know that physical restraint is even a factor in these cases.
The National Association of Medical Examiners and the American College of Emergency Physicians disagree with you. But what do they know?
When someone starts behaving with the symptoms of ExDS (Excited Delirium Syndrome) who do you think gets called? A plumber? If they are a danger to themselves or others, force is going to be used to subdue them. Its no easy task. Ketamine injections have been found to be effective but some sort of control has to be gained to administer it.
I don’t think that’s what he said but call it what you will. When these people die its not because the police killed them. Its because there is some medical condition, often brought on by chronic and acute drug abuse. Officers and dispatchers are trained to recognize the symptoms call request medics. It is a medical call and not a criminal call. Once in custody they go to the hospital, not jail. (Criminal charges may still result). But if the person is destroying property or a danger, then some action to stop them must be taken. This is a syndrome and there is no simple test to confirm or deny that someone had or has it.
Another person who completely disregards the study’s discussion of the prevalence of force and restraint in ExDS cases. Also, my citation from the article suggests that police tend to be far quicker to use force in suspected ExDS cases, with deadlier results:
I’m willing to believe that this is a very difficult situation for police and EMS workers. I’m also willing to believe that there are cases where first responders do everything possible to help the person concerned, but have to use force and the person still ends up dead.
But when the studies show a strong correlation of police force with ExDS deaths, and when police defenders like you and pkbites not only downplay that, but continue to ignore altogether the medical literature’s findings about the significance of physical restraint on the death rate, then it starts to look a little bit disingenuous.
Your certainty seems to indicate that you will have no problem providing a cite for this.
Is there a cite for this from a medical authority? Because the ‘heart literally explodes’ is clearly nonsense and not something from any actual medical study as people have pointed out. Once part of your explanation is clearly myth, I’m not inclined to believe the rest of it, especially since you repeatedly fail to even acknowledge that restraint, physical force, and forced drugging that police do even occurs, much less explain how one determines that ‘ED’ is the cause of death rather than the restraint, physical force, and forced drugging.
Are there ever examples of ED in traumatic accidents? Or is it only in association with authority figures?
I figure if I am in an accident or something, I can probably take a whole lot of damage, and as long as the docs can fix me up, I’m not going to be mentally traumatized by it that much.
If a human deliberately inflicts even a tenth the damage of an auto accident, I think that that would cause me far greater trauma.
If being stripped of ones humanity and dignity by another human being causes such psychological damage that it can inflict a medical condition where nearly 10% of them die from it, then maybe we should rethink our approach to policing.
Due to restrictions I can’t post the video training I was hoping to. It talks about the rupture to the heart muscle I mentioned.
But here are a few available to anyone regarding this “fake” syndrome.
I expect a full report in the morning pointing out everything that is wrong with them and how some of you would make these terrible situations so much better. ;)You didn’t say ‘rupture’, you said that the heart literally explodes. Which is complete nonsense.
You’ve got long videos that repeat an assertion without showing any peer reviewed cites or support from medical researchers. I also doubt (though I’m not watching hours of video) that either offer any answers to the questions raised in this thread. Youtube is not a reliable source, and hour-long videos are a pretty standard bad debating technique (cue the obvious ‘oh, you didn’t spend 2 hours watching all of these videos? then I am right! I win!’).
The idea that people in conflict get ‘excited delirium’ and then they die because the condition causes their hearts to literally explode, and DEFINITELY NOT because of anything the police do to them is rather extraordinary, and needs more evidence than a couple of youtube videos that are about dealing with someone who is combative. If ‘excited delirium’ was just a name for ‘someone gets agitated and fights’, it would just be a name and wouldn’t involve an extraordinary claim. But since it’s claimed that the condition is distinct from drug overdose and it, not police treatment of the person or the drug overdose, causes death, and that the death is through the dramatic process of hearts exploding, there should be some kind of actual research and documentation on the phenomenon.
You are aware that was a training video for EMT’s and was written by an MD?
Cripes, even Wiki has a slew of medical cites. It is a real syndrome whether you like it or not.
But I realize it’s pick on cops week.
I’m not ignoring force and restraint during one of these incidents. The extreme physical exertion by the person going through it is an integral part it and will be at its highest when fighting the police. So, what are the cops supposed to do when encountering someone, quite likely naked (or dressed inappropriately for the weather) raving like an animal and destroying property? Your property? Or walking through your neighborhood where kids might be present. Just wait it out? Have the chopper drop a net on him? Having fought with a naked, mentally ill person, I can tell you, its no joke and officers don’t relish going to these kinds of calls.
In its resolution 401, A-08, the American Medical Association stated:
Excited delirium is a widely accepted entity in forensic pathology and is cited by medical examiners to explain the sudden in-custody death of individuals who are combative and in a highly agitated state. Excited delirium is broadly defined as a state of agitation, excitability, paranoia, aggression, and apparent immunity to pain, often associated with stimulant use and certain psychiatric disorders. … Speculation about triggering factors include sudden and intense activation of the sympathetic nervous system, with hyperthermia, and/or acidosis, which could trigger life-threatening arrhythmias in susceptible individuals.
"While it has not been ratified as a diagnosis by medial organizations such as the American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) both recognize excited delirium as constituting a medical condition associated with an increased risk of sudden death [1, 18]. In fact, the consensus of the American College of Emergency Physicians Task Force in 2012 was that “Excited Delirium Syndrome is a real syndrome, with uncertain, likely multiple, etiologies.” [5]. Article link - Ongoing issues with the diagnosis of excited delirium