Heart-breaking video last night of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsing on the football field, receiving cpr, then being taken to the hospital by ambulance.
No one knows for certain what caused the collapse, but many medical professionals are suspecting a condition called commotio cordis.
The American Heart Association introduced commotio cordis in a recent journal article as,
“Commotio cordis is a phenomenon in which a sudden blunt impact to the chest causes sudden death in the absence of cardiac damage. This condition was first described in the middle of the 18th century in the context of chest trauma among workers. Through most of the 20th century, it was only sporadically reported. In the last 2 or 3 decades, commotio cordis events have primarily occurred in sports, and thus, this phenomenon has become more well known to the sports communities and physicians. Commotio cordis is to be differentiated from cardiac contusion (contusio cordis), a situation in which blunt chest trauma causes structural cardiac damage, such as observed in motor vehicular accidents.”
Prayers for Damar Hamlin and his family. For more information on commotio cordis , please see the following link: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circep.111.962712#d1e141
