Damar Hamlin's Cardiac Arrest: A Cardiologist's Perspective

In this breaking news video, Mariell Jessup, MD, chief science and medical officer of the American Heart Association, gives an overview of the various conditions that could have caused the cardiac arrest of NFL player Damar Hamlin during Monday night's game.

The following is a transcript of her remarks:

Well, of course people are upset. Three hundred and fifty thousand sudden deaths happen every year, and it is a terrible thing to watch, especially when it's in the middle of an exciting football game.

There's lots of speculation about what could have caused this. The most common reason somebody has a cardiac arrest is that they have an underlying cardiac condition: either coronary artery disease, which is less likely in a young person, or that they have an underlying, unsuspected cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy is a problem with the muscle of the heart and one of the most common reasons why somebody has a cardiac arrest -- a young person with unsuspected heart disease -- is a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one [possible] cause. ... Other forms of inherited cardiomyopathy are also occasionally the cause. Usually, the muscle is weak for some reason, usually, [because of] an inherited condition.

There is another condition where the arteries that supply the heart muscle, the coronary arteries, have an abnormal connection and can ultimately cause a cardiac arrest.

Commotio cordis is a cardiac arrest after a blunt force trauma to the chest. It is thought that when the object, usually a ball, hits the chest, it hits it in a vulnerable cycle of the heart so that it begins an electrical instability and an arrhythmia, which we call ventricular fibrillation.

It's certainly hard to know just by looking at the video tapes. Commotio cordis is very unusual, it's rare. It has been described primarily with trauma to the chest with a ball, like a baseball or a softball, and tends to occur in young males, young being 15 or 16, that younger age. The reason for that is their chests haven't developed as much, so they're more susceptible to the blunt force of a ball.

It's described in lacrosse and, as I said, baseball and softball. It is not as well described or rarely is a result of a tackle in football. So, certainly people have talked about that as a cause, but we have no way of knowing with the information that we have now.

Luckily, we watched that he got CPR straight away. Everyone needs to know how to do CPR. You never know where you're going to have the chance to save a life. So if we learn anything during this tragedy, it is, learn CPR.

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