Why was Damar Hamlin the hospital for so long?

[Machine_Elf]

Last month, Damar Hamilton’s heart stopped after a hard hit to the chest during a pro football game. After ten minutes of on-field CPR, AED shocks and other treatment, he was taken to a hospital, where he stayed for a week or so. He was on a ventilator for several days.

Why the long hospital stay, and why the ventilator? Given the the original cardiac arrest event was induced by a physical blow, why did it take so long for doctors to trust that his heart was fine for the long haul, and why did he need help breathing during his hospital stay?

[NotherYinzer]

When my husband suffered a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) at work in 2013, he was taken to the hospital and placed in a medical coma. The doctors cooled his internal temperature to 94 degrees and kept him under while running tests. Warm-up back to 98.6 took a full 24 hours. It’s not a fast process. He was also on a ventilator, although I forget why. The human body is a delicate thing and can’t be forced to heal until it is ready.

Long story short, he was released from the hospital in about a week and was back at work a few days later. The whole process from SCA to back at the office was about 10 days tops. After the doctors cleared him to leave, one of them told us that the survival rate for an SCA that happens outside of a hospital is about 3%. Of those that do survive, many have brain damage from oxygen deprivation. He was lucky that when he collapsed he was in front of the nurses’ training building on a university campus. They got to use their CPR skills on a real body that day.

[kenobi_65]

Just to note that his last name is Hamlin, not Hamilton.

[Machine_Elf]

@NotherYinzer

After the doctors cleared him to leave, one of them told us that the survival rate for an SCA that happens outside of a hospital is about 3%. Of those that do survive, many have brain damage from oxygen deprivation. He was lucky that when he collapsed he was in front of the nurses’ training building on a university campus. They got to use their CPR skills on a real body that day.

I guess if you’re gonna be unlucky enough to suffer from SCA, it helps to be lucky enough to do it in front of a nurse’s training building, or in a sports stadium with a crack team of first-aid experts a few feet away on the sidelines.

There’s also Takahiro Ono, who suffered an SCA at Bondi Beach in Australia, and by pure luck had a crew of lifeguards participating in a photo shoot a few yards away. With their CPR efforts and use of an AED, they brought him back from the dead right there on the beach, and the whole thing was recorded on video as it happened:

Cardiac Science Defibrillator Saves Takahiro Ono on Bondi Beach

@kenobi_65

Just to note that his last name is Hamlin, not Hamilton.

Whoops, thanks for the correction. I’ll ask a mod to tweak the subject line.

[kenobi_65]

Bumping this, as an ESPN article on the NFL offseason contains some excerpts from a recent interview with Hamlin. In short: it sounds like his doctors still aren’t certain as to why he suffered cardiac arrest – it may have been commotio cordis, but that seems to be the diagnosis that’s made when there’s no other apparent cause.

Hamlin has made multiple public appearances as he continues his recovery, including during Super Bowl week in Arizona. But there is an important detail missing from the public discussion of his cardiac arrest: why it happened.

There can and should be sensitivity applied to that question; the full answer might reside within a level of medical detail that Hamlin prefers to keep private. In an interview that aired Monday, Hamlin told “Good Morning America” the cause of his collapse is “something I want to stay away from.” Later, he added that it is “something we’re still processing and still talking through with my doctors just to see what everything was.”

NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills has acknowledged the possibility of commotio cordis, a rare disruption of the heart’s rhythm caused by a precisely timed blow to the chest. But ultimately doctors diagnose commotio cordis through a process of ruling out other causes, and, as Hamlin indicated, that assessment is continuing.