PITTSBURGH — As Buffalo Bills’ player and McKees Rocks native Damar Hamlin remains hospitalized after entering cardiac arrest, Channel 11 is hearing from a local doctor about the condition.
Dr. Raghu Tadikamalla explained how cardiac arrest differs from a heart attack.
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“A heart attack is generally when an artery to the heart blocks... cardiac arrest is when the heart stops, or is vibrating instead of squeezing, and not able to function and squeeze blood to the body.”
While local physicians can’t definitively say what caused Hamlin to enter cardiac arrest, Dr. Tadikamalla explained what can generally prompt the condition.
He said there can be a number of causes, including genetic predispositions.
“Sometimes, cardiac arrest can happen out of the blue, with patients with no known heart history, and even after further extensive testing, we don’t diagnose an abnormality.”
In other, rare cases, an individual could suffer from what’s called commotio cordis, “where a sudden impact to the heart, usually with a firm object like a baseball or a hockey puck or a lacrosse ball, when timed inappropriately, can cause the heart’s electrical activity to degenerate and cause that rhythm called ventricular fibrillation, which results in the heart just shivering instead of squeezing and pumping in an organized fashion.”
Tadikamalla said that a patient’s outcome directly correlates to how quickly he or she receives life-saving therapies.
According to national reports, Hamlin received nine minutes of CPR, including the use of an automated external defibrillator.
“Hopefully he’ll do well since he was treated immediately, and appropriate equipment was on hand.”
Oftentimes, there will be no warning before someone enters cardiac arrest. An individual in cardiac arrest will typically collapse, have no pulse and not be breathing.
Dr. Tadikamalla encourages people to learn CPR in order to potentially save a life. He said you can search for CPR classes at https://cpr.heart.org/en/.
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