- BOSTON (Reuters) - A single blow to the chest is enough to stop a healthy
heart cold, researchers said Wednesday. The findings, from research with
young pigs, could explain why athletes, particularly children, suddenly
collapse and die after a seemingly minor blow to an unprotected chest by
a baseball, hockey puck or fall. The research team, led by Dr. Mark Link
of Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, found that the blow must
be at a specific area of the chest and timed to within 15 thousandths of
a second to make the heart shudder and stop. Writing in the New England
Journal of Medicine, they said if the chest is struck an instant earlier
or later, the heart may stop temporarily but then is able to resume quickly
its normal rhythm. The condition is called commotio cordis, and it can
make headlines.
-
- Matthew Messing, 16, died in 1995 after
he was thrown to the ice by a routine body check during a high school ice
hockey game in the Boston suburb of Quincy. A 14-year-old junior black
belt in karate died last month after a light blow to the chest during a
match, and a 6-year-old boy died after he was struck in the chest by a
ball thrown by his mother.
-
- The condition may be far more common
than the occasional headlines suggest, said Dr. Gregory Curfman, a deputy
editor of the Journal, because near-misses often go unreported. One exception
was last month when hockey player Chris Pronger of the St. Louis Blues
was struck by a puck in a playoff game and collapsed briefly. He recovered.
-
- ``It is possible that other near-miss
cases have gone undetected because the arrhythmias were too brief to cause
loss of consciousness,'' Curfman wrote. ``It is sobering that a seemingly
minor chest impact at an instant when the heart is suspended in diastole
can have such devastating consequences,'' he added. When the Link team
looked at what happens when softer ''safety baseballs'' strike the chest,
they discovered that they reduced the risk of sudden death significantly.
With the softest balls, the researchers were able to halt a pig's heartbeat
in two out of 26 impacts, compared to eight out of 23 tries with a regulation
baseball.
-
- Link and his team chose pigs because
their anatomy is so similar to humans. The animals were sedated and placed
in a sling before a ball-sized object was fired at them to see if their
hearts stopped beating. ``This finding has implications for the prevention
of commotio cordis in young baseball players, since properly designed safety
baseballs are feasible for use in recreational baseball and Little League,''
said Curfman. ``They are already being increasingly used.''
-
- Since 1996, the baseballs have been recommended
by the Consumer Product Safety Commission as a way to reduce injuries.
Curfman noted that the padding worn by hockey and lacrosse players does
not adequately protect the chest. Baseball players do not wear chest protection
when batting. The value of the new research, he said, is that it will ''raise
awareness about commotio cordis, demystify its cause, and educate us about
the recognition and prevention of this tragic phenomenon.''
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