Lives Beyond Saving?
Little if anything could have been done to save the lives of some of these nineteen athletes, or so it seemed:
- Joseph DiPrete-DiGioia was alone when he collapsed and had been dead for hours when his body was discovered.
- Patrick Geelan suffered a freak injury to his neck that resulted in a stroke.
- Thomas, Gadjev, Boatwright, Martin, Clinton, Frid and Stilwell had previously undetected congenital heart defects which led to SCA. Their hearts were essentially ticking time bombs, and could have given out at any time, not just while playing sports.
- Heuchling, Bailey and Grimm also died suddenly under circumstances that suggested that undetected heart conditions caused or at least contributed to their deaths.
- Jacob Salter's heart defect, while known, was not believed to be severe enough to put him at significant risk of sudden death, and he was cleared to play by his cardiologist.
- Justin Saccone was just plain unlucky: in the wrong place (he wasn't even supposed to be playing that day), struck by a baseball in the wrong spot (directly over the heart) at the wrong time (at the precise millisecond between heart contractions that it sent his heart into a lethal cardiac arrhythmia).
While both Kyle Lippo and Osten Gill appeared to have died from brain injuries suffered playing football, neither, as far as it appears from newspaper accounts, had a history of concussions, which might have prompted coaches or doctors to exercise caution before they were allowed to continue playing.
Lives That Might Have Been Saved
Only two deaths appear at first glance to have been preventable:
Zachary Tran's death, while tragic, should not have happened. Had the soccer goalpost on which Zachary was swinging been secured - as it should have been- he would still be alive. Instead, he became, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, at least the twenty-seventh person to die from a falling goalpost since 1979. Not surprisingly, his parents have since filed a wrongful death action against the park district, soccer association and goal post manufacturer.
Unlike Kyle Lippo and Osten Gill, James Van Slette did have a history of concussions, one so serious that it knocked him unconscious. It is unclear whether he was experiencing any abnormal neurological symptoms before his last game of the season. But, because he did not inform anyone other than his close friends that he was experiencing severe headaches after that game, it is possible that his brain was also injured before the game, placing him at significant risk of a potentially fatal condition called second impact syndrome, which occurs when an athlete, after sustaining a head injury such as concussion or cerebral contusion (bruised brain), suffers a second head injury before symptoms associated with the first have cleared. There is also no way to know whether Van Slette's life could have been saved had he told his parents about his headaches. His death, however, tells a cautionary tale, reinforcing a point emphasized by experts that athletes who do not report injuries or who underreport symptoms may be placing themselves at potentially life-threatening risk of brain injury.
Portable Defibrillators: Increasing The Odds Of Survival
Even those athletes who died from SCA, however, might have been saved had an AED been used to shock their erratic heartbeats into a normal rhythm during the critical first few minutes after collapse (survival rates drop 7 to 10% for each minute from collapse to defibrillation):
- An AED might have saved Justin Saccone's life, as it did the life of Sean Morley, 13, of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Like Justin, Sean suffered SCA after being hit in the chest with a baseball. But Sean was lucky: a policeman passing by the field had an AED in the trunk of his cruiser - donated to the police department by a local woman with an implantable cardiofibrillator - which he used to resuscitate Sean.
- An AED might have saved Nick Frid's life, but the eleven AEDs which the University of New Hampshire had purchased just the month before were not yet in service.
- An AED might have saved Jessica Clinton's life, as it did the life of an unidentified 16-year old girl from Orange County, New York, who suffered sudden cardiac arrest in her classroom but was revived by two teachers using an AED which the school had purchased to comply with a new state law requiring the devices in each public school and at every athletic contest in the state.
- An AED might have saved Merridy Stilwell's life, but the three AEDs donated to the local school district before her death were sitting on a shelf waiting for the Snohomish School Board to approve their use. A spokeswoman admitted that the school board's subsequent approval of a plan to put one AED in each secondary school and one at the high school and train at least half the district's employees in their use didn't "change the fact that it should have happened faster."
- An AED might have saved Emil Gadjev's life, but his Atlanta middle school did not have one on hand and a series of errors delayed the emergency response and caused a fire dispatcher to send a paramedic unit more than eight minutes away instead of one which could have arrived with an AED in only two or three minutes.
Whether Justin, Emil, Nick, Jessica, Merridy or any of the others who died from SCA could have been saved had an AED been available when they collapsed, no one will ever know, but AED advocates say having one on hand could have made a difference.
Crusading To Save Lives
When Rachel Moyer's 15-year old son Greg collapsed in the locker room during halftime of a high school basketball game in rural Pike County, Pennsylvania in December 2000, no AED was available to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm. She responded by starting a fund in his memory that has thus far donated numerous AEDs to schools, fire companies and ambulance corps, local churches, businesses; by training and certifying hundreds of people in CPR and the use of AEDs; by lobbying Congress to pass an AED bill; and by working with her state senator to obtain passage of Pennsylvania's first-in-the-nation law providing every school district in the Commonwealth two free AEDs and the chance to obtain additional units at a discounted price.
Karen Acompora's story is much the same as Rachel's. When her son, Louis, a high school lacrosse goalie from Long Island, New York died in March 2000 from commotio cordis after being struck in the chest by a ball during his first varsity game, Karen set up a foundation in his memory, appeared on "Oprah", and, with Rachel Moyer, helped obtain passage of "Louis's Law," a state law requiring an AED in every public school and at every school-sponsored event in New York.
Lives Saved, Lives Lost
That the efforts of Moyer and Acompora and many other AED advocates to increase public awareness and availability of AEDs have paid off in lives, not just of student athletes, but of teachers and even fans in the stands, is undeniable. Here are just three recent examples of "saves":
- In March 2003, a substitute teacher at a school in a Boston suburb was saved from certain death by a school nurse using the school's recently purchased AED;
- Just a week shy of three years after Louis Acompora's death, a Long Island, New York janitor was revived by an AED purchased directly as a result of Louis's Law.
- In December 2002, a 16-year old New York girl with no history of heart problems was revived using the school's recently-purchased AED. Said the school's assistant director; "We never would have purchased these AEDs if it hadn't been for the new law. And looking back now, I can't tell you how glad I am that we jumped right on this even before the Dec. 1 (implementation date)."
Yet, tragically, even as more and more AEDs are being purchased for schools, lives are still being lost because they are not available when and where they are needed most. While lives were being saved on Long Island because of AEDs bought to comply with Louis's law, lives in New York City were being lost because it had not complied with the law. On Jan. 6, 2003, a 19-year-old student died after he collapsed playing basketball at Harry S. Truman High in the Bronx. The very next day a 16-year-old girl died at a public school for disabled students on Staten Island. Whether an AED would have saved their lives cannot be known. But the response of New York City Mayor, Mike Bloomberg - to order that AEDs be placed in city schools as soon as possible - was no doubt small consolation to the grieving parents of the two students who died.
Nineteen Reasons To Do More
Nineteen kids. Nineteen lives lost far too soon. Nineteen reasons to do more to make youth sports safer, to educate parents, athletes, coaches and trainers on the warning signs of heat illness and second impact syndrome, to see that AEDs are at every youth sports contest, so that tomorrow, next month, next year, parents aren't left to wonder "what if ...."
Editor's Note: This article is being re-published from October 2003, because, while it focuses on the deaths of young athletes in 2003, more can and should be done to save the lives of our children playing sports, whether it be by taking a more comprehensive family history during pre-participation evaluations, placing AEDs at all youth sports practices and games, better concussion education and stricter return-to-play guidelines, or through teaching proper tackling technique in football. Please share your story with me: delench@MomsTEAM.com
