JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin was in critical condition Tuesday morning after the team said his heart stopped following a tackle during a Monday Night Football game.
In a chilling scene, Hamlin was administered CPR on the field while surrounded by teammates. Some of them were in tears while they shielded Hamlin from public view. After about an hour delay, the game was indefinitely postponed.
MORE | EXPLAINER: What happened to Damar Hamlin?
Hamlin, 24, was hurt while tackling Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins on a seemingly routine play that didn’t appear unusually violent.
While waiting for official word, News4JAX is looking into what may have happened on the field Monday night.
Samer M. Garas, MD, a cardiologist with Ascension St. Vincent’s, joined The Morning Show to discuss what may have caused Hamlin to go into cardiac arrest.
“There’s something called commotio cordis which basically is an injury to the heart where — at a single, specific point — you can affect the heart rhythm, and when the heart rhythm is disturbed, the heart stops beating and you can have ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia,” Garas said.
Garas said the situation could also be different depending on if Hamlin had any underlying heart conditions.
“Assuming he has a normal heart... (the cardiac arrest) that could happen can happen with a baseball hitting the chest, a hockey puck hitting the chest. In this case, it was a shoulder or helmet hitting right into the heart. But it has to be in a specific timing, a specific vulnerable spot that caused the heart rhythm to go out of order.”
News4JAX asked if it was odd that he stood up and appeared to be fine for a couple of seconds before he collapsed.
“No, not at all. The heart rhythm was starting to basically go out of order likely. And then he was able to stand up for a second and his blood pressure just went down. And then he collapsed. That’s most likely what happened,” he said.
Garas also said it was important that the medical staff did CPR, and/or that an AED was used to treat him on the field.
“That is a critical part to restore the rhythm back and get a pressure up because if the heart recovers, that’s fine. But if the brain is without enough perfusion for any extended period of time, then you can have nonreversible neurological damage. But if we’re able to do a quick CPR and defibrillator the person quickly and get a pressure, then the neurological damage is minimal and the young person can completely recover. So we don’t know if he has an underlying rhythm. We don’t know how quickly they were able to restore it. But at this point, it looks promising from the reports that they were able to get a pulse quickly and get him back. In that case, he should be able to recover from a neurological standpoint, which is at this time is probably the most acute issue,” he said.
Garas said everyone should know how to do CPR and have an AED nearby because of how lifesaving the technique can be.
“That is the most life-saving thing we can do out in the community is to be able to perform good CPR to get the pulse back up and also if there’s a defibrillator and so these are maneuvers that would make somebody’s life be normal again, or somebody to be nonsurvivable or have a terrible long term outcome or possibly die. So having good effective knowledge of CPR, having AEDs around in our communities is a lifesaving, very important skill to have,” Garas said.