Cody Sherrell, a 14-year-old from La Center, collapsed at basketball practice and later died. And a month earlier, 15-year-old John Hayes suffered cardiac arrest on the school bus on the way home from Richland High School.

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In November 2010, the Lepkes opted to pay the extra money for an optional athletic heart screening for their son, Matt. The ultrasound test, through Transmed Inc.’s Screening America program, was offered by the Beresford School District. The Lepkes’ decision was more about supporting the sports program at the school, where Scott was the high school principal at the time, than it was about any concern for their son’s health.

“We never, ever thought that there was a problem with him. He’d been an athlete his whole life,” said Sarah of her 12-year-old son.

But the ultrasound revealed a life-threatening defect in Matt’s heart – a large hole between his left and right atrium that had been there since birth. So large, in fact, that it went undetected during routine physicals that might have caught smaller, noisier heart murmurs.

“That’s the thing with murmurs – the bigger they are, the less likely you are to catch them,” said Scott, who has been superintendent of the Custer School District since July. “His was so big, that it wasn’t making a noise.”

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Doctors say the 14-year-old had a heart attack that may have been caused by cardiac arrhythmia. He remained in critical condition at Randall Children Hospital at Legacy Emanuel Wednesday night, with doctors keeping him medicated and in cooling blankets in order to prevent any brain damage.

Sherrell had no symptoms, which is common among young athletes who have serious cardiac issues, said his doctor, pediatric critical care specialist Mark Banks.

At a press conference held Tuesday, Banks urged parents to have their children screened for heart problems.

“As random and as unpredictable as it is, you want to make it even less so,” said Banks.

While schools require physical exams for student athletes, they do not include heart screenings like electrocardiograms, known as ECGs or EKGs.

“I’m biased as a cardiologist and as a parent. My feeling is that in general, screening with an electrocardiogram can uncover some abnormalities like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is the most common cause of sudden death in young athletes,” said James Beckerman, a cardiologist at Providence St. Vincent’s Heart Clinic.

Beckerman acknowledged there is some controversy surrounding heart screenings for young athletes, which sometimes result in false positives.

The American Heart Association does not currently recommend routine screenings for all athletes.

“I think there’s enough data to support it and I understand the controversies, but I also as a parent want to do what I believe would be best for my kids too,” said Beckerman.  “I appreciate the controversy, but anything we can do to prevent tragedies like this.”

He recommended concerned parents first speak with their child’s pediatrician regarding any screenings.

Parents should also ask their children if they have any symptoms while exercising or playing sports, such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chest pains or shortness of breath.

While many athletes, like Sherrell, show no symptoms, some do.

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A Parkston teenager credits a heart screening for saving her life. While Sam Herrold didn’t have any symptoms of heart problems, the screening revealed a potential danger.
Basketball is a big deal to the Herrold family. 16-year-old Erica is a captain on the Parkston Girls Basketball team. Her dad loves the sport, and her younger sister, Sam, planned to play varsity basketball during her 8th grade year.

“It was my life. That’s all I did,” Sam said.  Not only was Sam’s heart in the game, but at 6’4″, she appeared to be the picture-perfect basketball player…
“It’s a big part of her personality,” Sam’s Dad, Rick Herrold, said.

They soon found out otherwise. A heart screening found the 13-year-old has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes.

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Scott Driscoll knows all too well what 14-year-old Cody Sherrell’s family is going through.

Sherrell collapsed and went into cardiac arrest Tuesday afternoon while playing basketball at La Center Middle School.

Scott and Kelly Driscoll’s son, 13-year-old Quinn Driscoll, died in June 2009 after going into cardiac arrest while running around the school track during gym class.

Before word of Sherrell’s medical emergency made its way across the county, Scott Driscoll had heard the news that another young athlete was fighting for his life.

Sherrell was listed in critical condition Wednesday afternoon at Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland. The cause of Sherrell’s cardiac arrest and his prognosis is unknown.

“From a family perspective, you do relive the event,” Driscoll said Wednesday.

“Obviously, our hearts and condolences go out to that family because we know what they’re going through,” he added. “The first concern is the well-being of Cody and his family. It’s probably one of the worst things that can happen to a parent: the death or tragedy of a child.”

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I was never sure when I could stop crying every day.  It just kind of happened.  I wasn’t sure when I was allowed to start going to parties or other kid’s birthdays and have a good time.  That just happened too.  As I drove by the cemetery for the screening, I wanted to stop – I felt obligated to stop – but I didn’t.  I wondered that if Sally or Jaden were living in Frazier and I had not seen them in a while, would I have stopped?  Was I “with” Simon all day at the screening so I didn’t need to stop?  One of the things about being a grieving parent is that I normally don’t have the answer . . . just so many questions.  That’s the tombstone.

The milestone is exciting.  Downingtown marks our fourth screening this fall.  In the past, we did two screenings per year.   Historically, all of our screenings were done with CHOP.  However, this fall, we worked with three hospitals:  CHOP, duPont and Cincinnati Children’s.  In the past, all of our screenings were in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  In November, we held a screening in Cincinnati, OH.

Downingtown was our first event with duPont hospital.  All of the students registered on our new website.  Local pediatricians, school nurses and the National Honor Society volunteered.  We screened 267 students and several were referred for follow up.  We have a waiting list of over 300 students, so we’ll be heading back there in a few months.  Most importantly, we helped the Silva family, Steve, Christy, Devin and Quentin, remember Aidan.  He was seven years old when he died suddenly last summer.

Given all that we’ve accomplished over these past few months, I think that Simon is OK that I didn’t stop by.

I met a mother and her son that never knew Jose, but through water polo, have been impacted by his life, so they sold t-shirts in his memory.  I met another teammate that wanted to us to know how much he appreciated the heart screening; he was Jose’s good friend.  I shared hugs and tears with Luisa as we remembered our sons, and contemplated the impact that their lives have on other people.   I got acquainted with a hospital staff that turned my request for a one-off heart screening into a city-wide study of 1000 students.

I moved away from Cincinnati twenty-four years ago.  However, today, I felt like I was back home.

Cardiac Team from Cincinnati Children's

Luisa Cerda, Jose's Mother

Nicholas Ryan Over had seemed like a perfectly healthy 20-year-old.  ”He was like a lot of youths,” said his mother Cris Over. “On the outside he was fine. He was working part-time and going to college. He was living the life of a normal 20-year-old.”

What the Carlisle family didn’t know was that Nick had an undiagnosed heart condition called Arrhythmagenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD), a rare condition in which the right ventricle fills up with scar tissue. On April 8, 2001, Nick had a sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep and never woke up.

His death had shaken the family who had no idea that Nick even had a problem with his heart. Nick had played soccer in school and he never had any dizzy spells. There were no warning signs and no symptoms.  The only thing that could’ve caught Nick’s heart condition was a cardiac screening, and Cris Over is dedicated to making sure no other family is taken by surprise again.

Over and her husband George started the Nicholas Ryan Over Foundation a year after Nick’s death, and the two have been working diligently to do what they can to prevent deaths involving sudden cardiac arrest, including providing automated external defibrillator (AEDs) to schools in the Carlisle area.

Read more: http://www.cumberlink.com/news/local/article_34d7637c-f230-11e0-bc67-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1aiVwF0vK

Eric Paredes’ story is not unlike Wes Leonard’s, the Fennville High basketball star who collapsed and died in Michigan last March of sudden cardiac arrest minutes after hitting the game-winning overtime shot.

Paredes, like Leonard, was an otherwise healthy athlete who had an undetected ticking time bomb — a heart abnormality — that triggered his death.

Paredes was 15. He was a hip-hop dancer for Culture Shock Dance Company. He was a football player with his sights set on making the junior varsity squad at Steele Canyon High. He was a wrestler who was expected to move up to varsity.

But his life ended on July 23, 2009, the summer before his sophomore year. Paredes had been home alone when his father found him collapsed on the kitchen floor, a victim of sudden cardiac death.

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WASHINGTON  — A new study proves the importance of electrocardiographic (ECG) screenings to identify heart abnormalities in young adults, including both athletes and non-athletes.  The study, published in the October edition of HeartRhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society, demonstrates the success of a high-volume ECG screening program designed to identify potential life-threatening heart arrhythmias in high school students.  Of the more than 32,000 students screened, ECG abnormalities that may be associated with the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) were identified in over 800 students.

More than 250,000 deaths occur each year as a result of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and, more specifically, SCD occurs in an estimated 2,000 young adults annually in the United States[i].  While SCA among young adults is a serious concern, the primary challenge with ECG screenings on a large scale is the lack of efficiency and the likelihood for a large number of false positive results.  The study, led by Joseph Marek, MD, of the Midwest Heart Foundation, used a standardized and community-based screening program following strict quality controls and performed an average of 880 ECG screenings each day.

The screenings were performed during regular school hours in twenty-four Chicago suburban high schools between September 2006 and May 2009.  In order to complete the study on a large scale, community volunteers participated in a successful and controlled training program. With the aid of the trained community volunteers, 32,561 students between the ages of 14 to 19, including athletes and non-athletes, were successfully screened.

Results showed that 817 (2.5 percent) of the 32,561 screened had ECG abnormities that could be associated with SCD.  Specifically, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) was found in 141 participants, which may be associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), the most common cause of SCD.  In addition, 100 participants were found with Prolonged QTc that may indicate Long QT syndrome which may also be associated with SCD.

“The screening process is an important step in trying to save lives because it helps us identify the individuals who are at the greatest risk of SCA and, ultimately, it has the potential to prevent incidents of sudden death from occurring,” said Marek. “As proof, some European countries have implemented successful screening programs in high volume that show great success in reducing SCA in young adults.”

In a study conducted in Italy over a 26-year period[ii], ECG screenings in young athletes demonstrated an 89 percent reduction in SCD.  It was proven that the incidence of sudden cardiac death in young competitive athletes substantially declined in the region of Italy where a nationwide systematic screening was introduced.  Studies like this show that it is important to understand the preventative and implementable measures that can be taken to decrease the death rate of young adults from SCA.

“We believe our findings demonstrate the feasibility of performing high-quality, low cost ECG screenings in large U.S. populations which creates the potential to reduce the overall rate of SCD in our country,” said Marek.

[i] Atkins, Dianne et al. Epidemiology and Outcomes From Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Children. Circulation. 2009 March 9; 119: 1484-1491.

[ii] Corrado, Domenico et al. Trends in Sudden Cardiovascular Death in Young Competitive Athletes After Implementation of a Preparticpation Screening Program. JAMA. 2006: 296 (13):1593-1601.

Contact: Kennesha Baldwin

Heart Rhythm Society

(202) 464-3476

kbaldwin@HRSonline.org