there have been a couple of kids who had heart problems that went un-diagnosed.the schools,including high school do a bad job at looking for them(hart problems).hart murmurs and such can go undetected if not look for specifically.plus alot of kids take stimulants to increase their stamina and such,this doesnt help the hart.anything to grab a edge on your compition.still,this is a tragic loss.there has to be better exams for student athlete aswell as pro`s.until then we will continue to mourn the loss of young people.
Specifically, the disease that's been causing so many problems among young athletes is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which is a fancy way of saying a thickening of the heart muscle. It's what killed Hank Gathers back in 1990, and Jason Collier of the Hawks just a couple years ago. A heart abnormality is part of what the huge flap was between the Bulls and Eddie Curry. The most recent instance off the top of my head was Damien Nash, of the Denver Broncos, who died after a charity basketball game.
There was a terrific article in Sports Illustrated about this back in December, I think it was. Check it out.
It's very sad. I'm starting to wonder if electrocardiograms and the like shouldn't be a mandatory part of physicals now?
Not to mention Marfan Syndrome, which is what killed Flo Hyman. Seems to be really prevalent in exceptionally tall individuals, hence a lot of basketball players.
I dunno, watching these kids run up and down the court for 40 minutes at a time, I'm surprised more hearts don't explode.
So sad and depressing. A few years ago, at my high school, a kid by the name of Cody Pipes collapsed during a summer basketball practice and died on the spot. The coaching staff's across America and the world really need to start caring about their players health.
often it has turned out to be a defective valve or something from birth which
the person has been able to live with, till now.
Pete Maravich, who died in similar circumstances, had one valve in his
heart which was congenitally (from birth) misformed; he somehow had a phenomenal
career before the heart got him at age 40.
several cases have been found out to be a malady of this sort.
Unfortunately, the thing with HCM is that it can develop anytime during one's lifetime, not just at birth. Genes play a large part of the situation as well.
Getting an ECG and doing some decent family history research before letting kids/adults play competitive sports could really help lessen these incidents, and hopefully will become more commonplace for athlete's.
I don't think these are all things that can be blamed on the coaching staff. These kids all go through tough physicals that are meant to really test these kids to make sure the are ok. A school is not gonna purposely take a chance that something like this may happen. With the amount of kids checked out there are always gonna be cases where someone with a problem makes it through. In some cases coaches I believe have pushed kids past points they shouldn't have and that's when the things like heat stroke deaths happen. ((Rip: Stringer)) However sometimes there are some things that just happen.
There are various congenital heart defects - American Heart Ass's says 3-4% of us have one.
Usually it's a malady called Hypertrophic Cardiomyapathy (HCM). You can catch this with an echocardiogram (sonogram). If HCM is found, the athlete needs to quit playing sports and check in with your doctor from time to time.
The only problem is that echos are expensive and insurance will not cover it for a young kid presummed to be healthy. Unless a doctor orders it up then the insurance will cover it.
Here in GA, we've had about 10 athletes die since around 2000 and most had HCM.
