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.
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But the bottom line is that heart attacks and sudden cardiac arrest are two different problems.
That is not a correct statement. The majority of sudden deaths occurring in middle aged athletes are due to atherosclerosis with plaque rupture resulting in myocardial infarction (heart attack) and ventricular fibrillation. And the survival rate for out of hospital cardiac arrest is only 10%.
It is true that patients with a prior history of myocardial infarction, particularly if they have sustained significant damage to the heart muscle, are at risk for sudden death on the basis of an arrhythmia, which at that point is a purely electrical problem. These individuals should have a defibrillator implanted prophylactically.
In young athletes, the most common cause of sudden death is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
The one factor that running has that is more dangerous than swimming is the fact that while running your heart has to pump blood upstream to your head and while swimming it just flows easily along, thus avoiding a problem (which might have killed Jim Fixx, of running fame) which is lack of oxygen to the brain.
Also incorrect. Blood flow to the brain ceases when your heart fibrillates, regardless of your body position. Jim Fixx had extensive atherosclerosis at the time of his death.
But the bottom line is that heart attacks and sudden cardiac arrest are two different problems.
That is not a correct statement. The majority of sudden deaths occurring in middle aged athletes are due to atherosclerosis with plaque rupture resulting in myocardial infarction (heart attack) and ventricular fibrillation. And the survival rate for out of hospital cardiac arrest is only 10%.
It is true that patients with a prior history of myocardial infarction, particularly if they have sustained significant damage to the heart muscle, are at risk for sudden death on the basis of an arrhythmia, which at that point is a purely electrical problem. These individuals should have a defibrillator implanted prophylactically.
In young athletes, the most common cause of sudden death is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
The one factor that running has that is more dangerous than swimming is the fact that while running your heart has to pump blood upstream to your head and while swimming it just flows easily along, thus avoiding a problem (which might have killed Jim Fixx, of running fame) which is lack of oxygen to the brain.
Also incorrect. Blood flow to the brain ceases when your heart fibrillates, regardless of your body position. Jim Fixx had extensive atherosclerosis at the time of his death.
