Safety gear for young athletes offers little protection from sudden death

New research has shown that the sports safety gear worn by young athletes may not give them protection from sudden death caused by a blow to the chest.

Commercially available equipment it seems may not adequately protect young athletes if the chest is hit in a manner that triggers an irregular heartbeat called ventricular fibrillation.

Such a blunt, non-penetrating blow to the chest can occur during hard contact with another player in football or hockey, or when an athlete is hit by a baseball bat, hockey stick, puck, ball or other kind of projectile.

The senior author of the study Dr. Barry J. Maron, director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, says it is all down to the timing of the blow and if it occurs directly over the heart at a particular time in the heart's cycle, the results can be catastrophic.

Then the heart's electrical activity becomes disordered and its lower chambers contract in a rapid, unsynchronized way, allowing little or no blood to be pumped; this can result in collapse and sudden death unless immediate medical help is provided.

Maron and his colleagues arrived at this conclusion after analyzing 182 cases of fatal chest blows recorded in the United States since 1995.

Of those, 47 percent occurred during practice or competition in organized sports, and 53 percent occurred during recreational sports or normal household activities.

The researchers found that of the 85 cases involving competitive athletes, 33 (39 percent) of the victims were wearing "potentially protective equipment".

The athletes, average age 15, included 14 hockey players (two goalies), 10 football players, six lacrosse players (three goalies), and three baseball players (all catchers).

In 23 of those 33 cases, the players' protective padding was not covering the chest at the time of the blow but in 10 cases, projectiles directly struck the chest protector.

Maron says the athletes wore standard, commercially available chest barriers, made of polymer foam covered by fabric or a hard shell, generally thought to provide adequate protection.

Maron says the findings indicate a need for better chest protection to make the athletic field safer for young participants, and those involved with youth sports must be taught to recognize when a child has suffered the potentially deadly heart rhythm, known as commotio cordis, so that prompt resuscitation and defibrillation can occur.

He suggested that there needs to be more attention given to chest protection for young athletes.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, in Chicago.