Is this an alarm that we should swim more to strengthen our hearts? Though similar tragedies happened to swimmers in the past, too, I believe. Seems all are in their late 50's?
News from
www.newsday.com/.../ny-nyrun0312133574nov03,0,6679842.story
Marathon runner dies after collapsing at finish line
BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN9:32 PM EST, November 2, 2008
A 58-year-old runner who had just finished the New York Marathon Sunday collapsed at the finish line after going into cardiac arrest and later died at a local hospital, police said.
Carlos Jose Gomes, of Sao Paolo, Brazil, was pronounced dead at Lenox Hill Hospital at about 5:20 p.m., police said. He had fallen ill after he crossed the finish line of the 26.2 mile race near the intersection of 81st Street and Central Park West.
Two other people suffered cardiac arrest Sunday while running in the race, police said.
A 59-year-old man collapsed in the middle of the Queensboro Bridge, police said. A fellow runner stopped and administered CPR until two emergency medical technicians arrived.
The runner was taken to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he was listed as critical but stable, according to one of the EMTs.
Jean-Louis Maubaret, 59, a French national, was running alongside his wife across the Queensboro Bridge between the 15th and 16th mile of the race when he collapsed, unconscious and not breathing, according to EMT Salvatore Sangeniti.
Sangeniti, 47, of the New York Fire Department EMS Division 4, was crossing the bridge from the Manhattan side when he and his partner, Amanda Wong, received a radio call about the runner. They reached the middle of the bridge to find another runner performing CPR.
Sangeniti, of Centereach, said he placed a defibrillator on Maubaret's chest. After one shock, he said, the runner regained consciousness and resumed breathing.
The runner who performed CPR returned to the race once he saw that Maubaret had regained consciousness, Sangeniti said.
Another marathoner suffered cardiac arrest on East 107th Street yesterday afternoon. The man, whose name was not immediately known, had collapsed and was not breathing, according to an FDNY spokesman. EMTs performed CPR as he was rushed by ambulance to Mount Sinai Medical Center.
My layman's understanding of cardiac death associated with exercise is that a "heart attack" is different from "sudden cardiac arrest"--though the two can be related.
A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, occurs when a blood clot (usually from a dislodged atherosclerotic plaque fragment) ends up blocking one of the coronary arteries, starving heart muscle of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to keep operating. When you have a heart attack, you can usually live long enough to get to the hospital; clot busting drugs (including tPa and even chewing an aspirin tablet) can make a difference. In a sense, a heart attack is a PLUMBING problem.
Sudden cardiac arrest, on the other hand, occurs when the electrical impulses that mediate coordinated beating of the heart chambers get badly out of whack, especially in the lower ventricles which supply blood to the body, brain, and lungs. Normally, the heart's pacemaker causes a regular thud-thud, thud-thud that correlates with the shunting of blood from the atria (upper two chambers) to the ventricles (lower two chambers) and then into circulation. In really bad cases, the electrical coordination here gets so out of whack that the heart beats like an uncoordinated "bag of worms"--Latin, I once heard, for fibrillation. Once this starts, your body, brain, lungs, etc. stop getting any blood supply. Victims of sudden cardiac arrest usually die within minutes if their hearts are not shocked back into a normal rhythm by a defibrillator. Sudden cardiac arrest thus is an ELECTRICAL problem.
Most athletes who die in marathons are victims of the cardiac arrest. In pool competitions, paramedics are supposed to have automatic defibrillators at the ready. I doubt there's been much research, but I would suspect that pool swimming would have a lower death rate than marathons because of proximity of defibrillators to the participating athletes. In open water swimming, I would think that sudden cardiac arrest would have even higher mortality because the victim would slip under the water and more likely drown without assistance.
One final note: atherosclerosis can contribute to sudden cardiac arrest by causing small classic heart attacks that scar the heart muscle, making it less able to propagate electrical signals properly. High blood pressure can also lead to pathological enlargement of heat muscle, which also affects electrical conduction in sometimes harmful ways. But the bottom line is that heart attacks and sudden cardiac arrest are two different problems.
My layman's understanding of cardiac death associated with exercise is that a "heart attack" is different from "sudden cardiac arrest"--though the two can be related.
A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, occurs when a blood clot (usually from a dislodged atherosclerotic plaque fragment) ends up blocking one of the coronary arteries, starving heart muscle of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to keep operating. When you have a heart attack, you can usually live long enough to get to the hospital; clot busting drugs (including tPa and even chewing an aspirin tablet) can make a difference. In a sense, a heart attack is a PLUMBING problem.
Sudden cardiac arrest, on the other hand, occurs when the electrical impulses that mediate coordinated beating of the heart chambers get badly out of whack, especially in the lower ventricles which supply blood to the body, brain, and lungs. Normally, the heart's pacemaker causes a regular thud-thud, thud-thud that correlates with the shunting of blood from the atria (upper two chambers) to the ventricles (lower two chambers) and then into circulation. In really bad cases, the electrical coordination here gets so out of whack that the heart beats like an uncoordinated "bag of worms"--Latin, I once heard, for fibrillation. Once this starts, your body, brain, lungs, etc. stop getting any blood supply. Victims of sudden cardiac arrest usually die within minutes if their hearts are not shocked back into a normal rhythm by a defibrillator. Sudden cardiac arrest thus is an ELECTRICAL problem.
Most athletes who die in marathons are victims of the cardiac arrest. In pool competitions, paramedics are supposed to have automatic defibrillators at the ready. I doubt there's been much research, but I would suspect that pool swimming would have a lower death rate than marathons because of proximity of defibrillators to the participating athletes. In open water swimming, I would think that sudden cardiac arrest would have even higher mortality because the victim would slip under the water and more likely drown without assistance.
One final note: atherosclerosis can contribute to sudden cardiac arrest by causing small classic heart attacks that scar the heart muscle, making it less able to propagate electrical signals properly. High blood pressure can also lead to pathological enlargement of heat muscle, which also affects electrical conduction in sometimes harmful ways. But the bottom line is that heart attacks and sudden cardiac arrest are two different problems.
