In one of those banners at the bottom of the TV screen during the Today Show, our local affiliate mentioned that a fan who had had a heart attack at Sunday’s Patriots’ game has died. Is this news?
Without having a cite, I vaguely remember that heart attacks at sports games are not that uncommon, perhaps as many as one per game. A pro sports stadium has lots of seats, perhaps 30k+. Since the average life expentency is about 30k days, a random assortment of 30k people would produce one death per day. (I know that the fans at sportting events are not a random selection of people).
But a game only lasts for a few hours, not an entire day. So instead of a 1/30,000 chance of having a death occur, it would be closer to 1/240,000. Of course really old, sick and feeble people (who are the usual suspects for dying) don’t tend to go to sporting events, so you might need to factor that into the statistics. Therefore the chances are more like 1/2.4 million… or something.
One factor that would help people survive is that almost every pro and college FB game has a full paramedic crew in the stadium. They don’t have to drive there, they just need to run over to where the patient is.
And IIRC the trainers from the Bengals were administering CPR ASAP before the paramedics arrived in this case. It didn’t work but they had trained personnel in place quickly.
I’ve had the opportunity to work NCAA (Big 12) football games and MLB games. There’s quite a bit of EMS resources at each one. At the football games, we had 3 EMT/Paramedic crews in the stands, 1 paramedic in the luxury boxes, and 1 or more paramedics in the first aid room. There was also a transport ambulance and crew dedicated to the field (players). All of the crews had a full complement of advanced life support equipment and access to defibrillators.
At baseball games, we have 2 first aid room paramedics, 2 bike paramedics, a home plate medic, a coordinator, and a transport ambulance dedicated to the field.
I’ve worked 100+ games over many years and worked 1 cardiac arrest.
A pro football stadium has a capacity of more like 75,000. Most modern baseball stadiums are smaller (more like 40,000 or so).
ETA: A few years back, I was at a spring training baseball game in Sarasota, FL, between the Reds and Pirates. There was an EMT crew on call at the stadium (which maybe held 5K or so), and they were kept busy, as three different fans were struck by foul balls. A lot of the fans at spring training games are senior citizens, and a lot of them wind up sitting in the first few rows. Since many seniors have slowed reflexes, it was a recipe for being unable to get away from the foul balls.
back when I was in the biz I only worked a few School sporting events but did a couple dozen concerts. Most of our calls for assistance were drunks falling down stairs and a few drug/alcohol overdose issues.
My niche was motocross races, did about 50 of those, those guys get banged up all the time and we tranported many severely injured racers, but no spectators that I recall.
Based on the years that I had season tickets for the Minnesota Vikings, there is a high percentage of medical doctors in the stands, too. At one game, I observed the heads of both the University of Minnesota Heart Hospital and the Mayo Clinic heart unit in attendance. That stadium might have been the best place in the whole state to have had a heart attack on that day!
Years ago when I drove race cars at a local short track, a red flag was thrown half way through a race. I didn’t see any crashed cars on the track that would have warranted the stopping of the race. As soon as everyone stopped, the race track ambulance, which is always in the pits on the other side of the track from the grandstand, zipped over to the front stretch gate and the medics went into the stands. Found out later a fan had a heart attack.