This is PEDYACAST.

Welcome to Pediacast, a pediatric podcast for parents.

And now, direct from the campus of nationwide children's, here is your host, Dr. Mike.

Hello, everyone, and welcome.

Once again to Pediacast.

It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.

This is Dr. Mike, coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital.

We're in Columbus, Ohio.

It's episode 535 for April 11th, 2020.

We're calling this one Sudden Cardiac Death and Student Athletes.

I want to welcome all of you to the program.

So we have another important topic for you this week as we consider sudden cardiac death

in student athletes, which, by the way, does not have to lead to actual death if the right equipment

and the right people with the right skills happen to be nearby,

which is what makes this topic so important because you might be that right person

who is nearby when an athlete goes down on the playing field or the practice court.

We all saw this happen a few months ago in the NFL.

Damar Hamlin was playing safety for the

Buffalo Bills during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals when he collapsed following a tackle.

Now, we do not know with certainty the reason for his collapse because we don't have access

to his medical records, but a likely scenario is that he was hit hard in the chest, which caused his heart to change its electrical pattern.

So instead of all the muscle cells contracting in unison, they became unsynchronized, which is called myocardial fibrillation.

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