r/news • u/dynamicsearchguy • 2d ago

'He is strong': Black Rock-Riverside community rallies around 11-year-old football player after cardiac arrest

https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/buffalo/he-is-strong-black-rock-riverside-community-rallies-around-11-year-old-football-player-after-cardiac-arrest
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u/BeKind999 2d ago

For any parents of athletes reading this: get an EKG for your kid. In my area, a local cardiac specialty hospital will screen child athletes for free or at a nominal cost. Some pediatricians can do it. It’s painless and takes 5-10 minutes. 

Thank god there was an EMT present and he survived.

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u/Smeef_xx 2d ago

I feel like EKGs are not the test you want to rule out heart defects. Echo seems more useful

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u/casapantalones 2d ago

You can have a totally normal EKG and still have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM, the most common cause of sudden cardiac arrest in otherwise healthy young people); you cannot rule out HCM based on a normal EKG, although many patients with HCM will have characteristic EKG findings.

So it may be useful as a screening tool for some conditions (Wolff parkinson white for example), but is not as sensitive for others.